Now, call me old fashioned - I'm sure you will - but I think two things in this life should be free or at least at no cost when you come to use them. Yes, I'm talking about education and health. Don't even get me started on health, but let's look at education for a moment.

Every time your kid steps across the threshold of any institution even loosely calling itself a school there's a ching-ching sound, or at least that's what it feels like.

Let me give you some examples. So, the four year old (let's give him the evocative moniker Four to save me typing it out all the time) was at a day-care place from the age of two, mainly, I felt, to help him learn some social skills. This cost $60 a day and was on the cheap end of the scale. Obviously if he'd been in all week then you would need to be earning $100K a year to make it worthwhile even trying to decide which tie to wear to work.

Now, Master Four is at a 'proper' pre-school - $30 a day - because he goes to school next year, and the begging has begun again. This last weekend when the school was being used as a polling station they had this idea that everyone should bake a cake (oh yeah, I've really got time to knock up a quick Black Forest Gateau and ice it myself, along with a brace of fairy cakes) so starving hungry voters (I mean, come on!) would see them and make a purchase which goes ker-ching into the pre-school coffers.

The pizza people do seem to be getting desperate. Hardly a week goes by without some new gimmick designed to make you fatter. I've seen the big cheese baubles with which they decorate the sides of the deep pan, extra cheese, got-all-the-lot, with extra cheese, pizzas. I've seen the thick crusts, thin crusts, crispy crusts, crusts for people with dentures, the no crust, the just-a-crust and the burger pizza. No, I made the last one up, but it can't be long before the burger pizza arrives. I assume when it does it'll carry a hotline number which will link you direct to your nearest ambulance station. I think that if you order two burger pizzas, extra bucket size cokes, a barrel of mashed potato in a gravy boat and a side of spare rib pizzas with smokey-joe sauce, they will even waive the ambulance fee. Of course, after eating all that there's no guarantee you'll survive the journey, or the triple heart bypass which awaits you.
Mind you, on the plus side you will be really full.

Honestly, it makes you wonder. If you don't 'volunteer' for the cleaning duty at least once a year they slap an additional $60 on your bill. I'm obviously in the wrong business.

So, we got the rakes out and the blower. I have never used one of these things before (the blower, I mean) not least because I can see no point to them, also because it strikes me as lazy, and also I have an eye to the environment too, as well as people who like to sleep in on a Saturday morning without the roar of a bellowing machine outside their bedroom window.

The blower is like a wild beast. It blows like a thing possesed but all it does is redistribute the leaves somewhere else, from whence they will blow back once the wind gets up. I know this because the wind works like a leaf blower, unless I'm much mistaken.

Strangely, there seem to be plenty of people out there who are willing to fork out money to buy these useless machines. I assume they will be husbands who want to look busy when the wife is prowling, men who like something that throbs in their hands and looks like a big gun, and oil company executives who'd smile because your blower guzzles liquid faster than a wino given the keys to Chateau Mouton de Rothschild's cellars.

Half an hour later these big American women arrived, parking their heaving four wheel drives outside in a row of gleaming bumpers and lavish gold and silver badges. Why they don't just storm through the chain link fence I don't know, it would mean even less walking. Then they unleashed their three-wheel buggies from the backs like tanks dropping into Iraq, plonked their kids in and came across the park in an attack formation.

"Mind if we share the bench," one of them shouted at me as they all moved in. I gave them a nod. After all, I was playing with the kid.

Over the space of the next half an hour more and more of them turned up and my belongings were getting pushed to the edge and a kid was viciously kicking my ball (the blow-up variety, not one of my testicles...) under the bench.

I wondered - not for the first time because this has in fact happened three times now - how come these women who sit and talk about visas and trips to the US consulate and did you see Simon and that awful Charise at the wedding, oh you didn't go Mary-Lou, were you ill, oh really, not invited, lordy!, can sit on a bench and I can't.  And then I realised what it was, women go to parks to gossip while men go to play with their kids.

Yes, yes, I know, some blokes act like it's community service they're forcibly engaged in - and the reading of the newspaper hardly makes for bonding with your child on a Saturday morning - but women, they never play with their kids, they just gas-bag.

The thing is this, it is cheaper to get in the Motor Show as a family than if you decide to go in individually.

George wasn't too impressed with this strategy but then I told him it would save some money (around about $10, but look it all helps) and then he was more than keen. After all, his family haven't built their empire on frittering the folding stuff away or undercharging on the avocados.

When we got there the girl behind the counter said: "so, two adults and two children."
"We're a family," I said. "Family rate, that's what we're after."
The girl looked over my shoulder to see if there was anyone else there, like a wife, then looked at George's bicep which was resting on the counter top and said, "Well, you have to be a family."
"We're a gay family," said George, barely able to contain his mirth.
"We're happily gay," I said.
"Oh yeah," said George running on the spot now, "ecstatic we are. Love it, we do."
The girl looked at us again and opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it and let us have the family rate.

This afternoon George called me and said, "Jesus, my wife is going bonkers. Junior told her I was gay and that I'd told the woman in the booth at the Motor Show."
"Well," I said.
"Yeah, and now she says she's always had doubts about me. Said my biceps always looked too big, and blokes were always commenting on them."
"Well, they are, aren't they, commenting, as it happens."
There was a silence on the line.
"So, you think I'm gay, then?"
"No."
"Are you just saying that?"
"No."
"Do you think my hair's too long?"
"No."
"How much did we save?"
"$10."
"And now I'm gay."
"Well, as far as the woman in the booth is concerned, yes, but otherwise no. Well, not as far as I know, but then you could always have been gay for all I know."
"Jesus."
"But lots of my friends are gay."
"Oh, that's alright then."
"Yeah and remember."
"What?"
"We did save a tenner."

Anyway, he's been watching The Secret which if you don't know it, is apparently  a way of ensuring that you come into vast riches. I've seen the DVD - he thoughtfully had one prepared for me - and it seems that basically if you have the power of positive thought you'll soon be wallowing in lucre.

"See, mate," he said, his eyes fairly gleaming, "what we do is set up a website and we call it something like..." and here he looked far out to sea and frowned and it being Bondi with its rips I thought maybe he'd seen someone drowning because once he saw his brother out there on a wind-surf being swept off by a vicious swirl to Papua New Guinea. Eventually he was rescued by the Coast Guard when he became, as the report put it, 'a danger to shipping'.

Now, one of them, let's call her Clarissa, is one of those very attractive women who stop traffic, cause men to stare and accidents to happen, and who stole her husband from his wife of many years with, I suspect, a combination of her breasts which are much remarked upon by just about everyone in the neighbourhood, man, woman and beast (that's the bloke at number 24), and her ability to go out half-clothed and parade herself around the shops without ever getting arrested. Personally I find her a bit too obvious for my liking, but it seems that's just me.

Anyway, I pointed out that my wife had always said, "well, going to work is the easy bit, looking after the kids is real work." (A sentiment all my male friends with kids have had their wives use on them like a whip, especially when they've mentioned they had a lunch one day at work). So, with something approaching glee I said, "You know, Clarissa, to be honest I think looking after the nippers is much easier than going to work in an office everyday. I mean, once they're in pre-school the day is mine."

Clarissa looked fit to burst - which is a sight, let me tell you - and said through gritted teeth, "and I expect the house is always tidy!" I looked at her and said, "isn't yours?" Well, if she'd been older I think a blood vessel would have burst right there and then.
"And, I assume," she said, her voice rising as if she now was sucking a lemon with some gusto, "there is always a meal on the table at 5.30?"
"Well," I said, "you have to eat."

And then I let it all go. "You know, Clarissa, it really is easier looking after the kids than going to work. For starters there's no commute - you get to take your kids to school when everyone else has been at work for an hour, and if you're sensible you live close enough to the school to walk, which gives you some excellent exercise every day. And there's no office politics to waste your time, and sometimes ruin your life, just little kids who get sent to their room if they scream."

I mean, really, the surprise to me is not that the Brits find this offensive and don't want it plastered on billboards along the motorway for fear some innocent young child may see it and ask the embarassing question, "Dad, what does it mean? What is Australia?" but more that Tourism Australia didn't spend some of our money (as indeed they normally like to do) before launching this ad on finding out if it indeed was acceptable.

Clearly they didn't ask and they didn't trial it in this country of bishops, maiden aunts and Tories who live in Chevenham-on-Bingley Blossom and who write to The Telegraph, and who coincidentally provide most of our money-spending tourists (yes, I know it's a long sentence but I can hold my breath for a devilish long time...).

That the Aussie journalist thought this quaint said it all for me, and on a day when once again I’ve come across some downright rudeness right here in Sydney.

Regular readers will know I’ve written about this rudeness before but it just never gets any better. The journo reckoned that the Brits (how he didn’t manage to call them Poms I just don’t know! It must have been very difficult to be so polite) and the Japanese are hyper-polite because they live in crowded, small islands and so have to be polite to get on!
What a load of old bollocks. (Oh sorry, forgive my French - as we English people would say).

It’s nothing to do with cramped conditions at all (though actually the Scottish are quite rude and they do have plenty of room...), it’s to do with cultures that go back a good number of years - thousands in fact. English and Japanese people are brought up to be polite, to let people out, to queue patiently (is there a better example of democracy than queuing – I think not), to not make fun of the afflicted (a lesson I learnt from my mother and which I am always quick to follow when an Australian cricket team loses three times in a row to England) and to generally help my fellow man.

Now, if you subscribe to the Aussie journo’s theory, Australians must be the rudest people on the planet, what with all the room we have here. And you know what, he could well be right.

Only today I pulled up behind a parked car to let someone come past (as you should, of course) and did I get a wave of a thank-you as the Holden Statesman sailed on by? Did I heck, vicar! Of course not, because you never do.

But in England you would rather drink lager and lime than not raise a hand in thanks. And it’s not like it takes a Herculean effort, is it?

Yesterday I was walking along with the nippers, one of them in the stroller, and this bloke was loading his trolley of goods, including foie gras I’m sure, into his giant 4WD and the trolley started to roll away down the street as he tucked his side of smoked salmon into the refrigerator unit. Executing a swift grab I managed to stop it and handed it back to him and all I got was a grunt. No thank-you. Nothing. Didn’t even look me in the eye.

Do not people realise that a simple thank-you makes the world go round a lot smoother? Obviously not.

And then, to cap it all I got a phone call from one of my whingeing Aussie friends in London who without so much as a “how are you” regaled me with whingeing about the snow. “It’s cold,” he moaned, “it’s freezing, it’s making the roads and pavements all icy and slippery, it’s soooo cold, we don’t think we can cope with it much longer, you can't even walk in the streets.” Moan, moan, moan....

“Yes,” I said looking out the window at the torrential rain, “it’s a shame you’re not here, it being the height of summer and all that.”
“Oh,” said my Aussie friend with palpable longing, “I dream of the Ozzie summer.”
“It’s raining buckets, mate,” I said drily.
“Jeez,” he said, “you Poms are always fucken whingeing.”
And then, unfortunately he had to go, because I cut him off.
“Oh, I’m dreadfully sorry”, I said to the buzzing phone as I replaced it in its cradle, “do forgive me”.

I'm talking about characters.
And I'm talking about personality tests.

Apparently if you want to be a refuse man and chuck people's rubbish in a truck you now have to do a personality test. If you want to work as a cleaner at an accountants in the city you have to be psycho-analysed before getting the job. I mean, honestly, what's that all about?

Just last week a professor at Australia's Macquarie Graduate School of Management, who thinks these tests are a load of old bollocks (he actually used different words, but I know what he meant) spoke out against them. In fact he teaches students how to fake them. Good man.

I myself had to do one of these tests for a job I went for about a year ago. It was one of the newer on-line tests and because I'm absolutely crap at maths I got my friend George to come along and hop into the chair when the numbers bit came up. My logic was he must be good at adding up and stuff like that because he's constantly weighing vegetables and calculating the price of a bushell of bananas, or whatever they use these days in the grocery trade.

George jumped into the chair and looked at the screen and squinted and then looked at me and said, "There's no mention of plums or radish."
"Why would there be?" I asked, getting a bit nervous and wondering whether I too should have subjected George to a test before I handed him the controls of my future.
"How much do you want this job?" he asked me with a frown.
I looked at him. "You want another beer?"
George scratched his chin and said, "Yeah, might as well. Anyway, New Zealand is a fuck of a cold place. You don't want to go there."

The professor has this to say: "People who are high performers are often quirky characters and these tests are designed to produce uniformity and conformity. We now live in a management world that says if you disagree with the boss, you have a personality problem. I think that's lamentable."

Hear, hear.

But it's not just work, is it? While once we used to applaud individualism, we used to congratulate those who produced something, well, different, today it's all about being homogenised, pasteurised (er, sorry, that's the milk) and springing out of the same mould.

Historically, to be argumentative meant to be intelligent, to be engaging in some sort of Socratic quest for the truth, to have a point of view meant you had something to say, something to contribute.

So what happens to all those people like you and me and the milkman who laugh at these personality tests which seek to pigeonhole us and make us the same as the man at number 92 (and weird he is, if you ask me) and make us all drive the same cars and buy the same food and see the same films?