I don't have the paperback to hand so I'm relying on my fading memory of the novel, but there's a line in John Updike's The Witches Of Eastwick in which one of the female protagonists talks about men "lording it" over the toilet bowl.

She's referring to their - our - ability to pee standing up.

It's not much an ability, really. I mean, it's not like being able to juggle or surf or skin a rabbit. Any man can do it who has the right troika of dangly bits taking up space in his trousers (clue: two are for balance and will have socks on, the other's for aiming and won't. Or shouldn't, anyway).

Now I never thought I'd be writing about this in a fashion column, but a trend is a trend and it now seems that far from "lording" it over the toilet bowl, we men should be - let's stick with the aristocratic metaphor - "ladying" it instead. In other words we should be sitting down to pee.

The habit is already popular in Japan, where 30% of men do it. But in a survey last year one-quarter of British men also admitted that they do it in order to use their mobiles.

That makes a kind of sense: if (like me) you've ever tried to answer two calls at once and if (like me) you have a company-issued Nokia "dumbphone", you'll know it handles like a bar of soap and shouldn't be produced anywhere near a toilet bowl.

The Swedes, being pretty fashion forward in every sense, have taken all this a step further. A councillor in the country's Left Party has tabled a motion to ban urinals completely and force men to sit down. In France and Holland there are also moves to make more men sit, and slogans to that effect too: "Laissez tomber votre pantalon, et asseyez vous!" goes one, "Toch niet weer een vieze plas op mijn badkamer vloer!" says another. Translation: "Drop yer breeks and sit!" and "Not another filthy puddle on my bathroom floor".

In Germany, meanwhile, there's even a gadget you can fix on to the toilet seat which scolds you if you dare to lift it. "Stand-peeing is not allowed here," it intones. Millions of these things have been sold, apparently.

Fine by me: I confess I'm a regular sitee and proud of it. I save standing up for when I want to write my name in the snow outside my house. Otherwise I'm always happy to take the weight off my feet and grab two minutes of relative peace from the hurly burly of family life.

I apologise if you're reading this over breakfast, by the way. I was going to write about snoods this week, because I was given one for Christmas, but in truth I still haven't figured out what it's for or how to wear it.

I hope to have conquered it by Valentine's Day, in which case I will post a selfie (snelfie?) on one of the popular social media sites - possibly from a sitting position in a small, white-tiled room.