The other day in London, I rushed for the toilets after an afternoon performance of Midsummer Night's Dream - you know how it is with all that tea and all that age.
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I wasn't alone. Other men made the same flight for release.
The conventional sign for a men's toilet (once called a gents) is a stylised man. The usual sign for a women's toilet (once called a ladies) is a stylised human in a skirt (presumably except in Scotland where men wear kilts).
But so right-on is London these days that the signs on toilets in fashionable venues like theatres have been changed so that the transgender symbol is sometimes used - as it was that day in the Bridge Theatre on the Thames.
The other symbols for gender are a circle with a cross at the bottom (female, sometimes known as the Venus symbol) and a circle with an arrow (male, sometimes known as the Mars Symbol).
The transgender symbol, seen increasingly in London, is a combination of the two - arrows and crosses going all ways.
It is very confusing in a rush. I saw the symbol, didn't quite know what to make of it, and rushed into the urinal.
So there we were - men at the wall - when in strode a Japanese lady. She saw us and her jaw dropped. This was not the conventional idea of a ladies toilet in Japan.
She was embarrassed. "Am I in the right place?" she asked the row of men, knowing the answer was "no".
The men turned as one and said, "Who knows these days?"
After making myself dignified, I explained what the sign was. She laughed and left - hastily.
She was confused by transgender signs and so were we. We are not alone.
Scott Morrison joins the ranks of the baffled.
The Prime Minister has labelled signs near his office saying "please use the bathroom that best fits your gender identity" as "ridiculous".
There is, of course, an overwhelming argument for inclusion and discrimination is to be abhorred.
But my suspicion is that Mr Morrison's pronouncement will enrage some well-heeled right-on people in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney - but win him friends in his heartland.
His pronouncement is one of those masterful political gestures which populists deploy skillfully.
It is the kind of gesture which works so well for Donald Trump and, I suspect, will for Boris Johnson in Britain.
Mr Trump's Tweets are increasingly outrageous. The chatterati can't quite believe that a President of the United States would offer to buy Greenland from Denmark and then describe the charming Prime Minister of Denmark's reasonable response as "nasty".
The liberal American press went into a melt-down of shame. Vanity Fair suggested a padded cell for the president.
But President Trump's approval ratings have barely shifted in two years. It's true that more people disapprove than approve but that's often true of presidents and prime ministers in office.
It may be that he is using outrage skillfully as a weapon. The more outraged the fashionable left becomes, the more his supporters in regional America stick to him.
And so it may be in Australia. The chattering classes misread the last election. The fashionable narrative was that it would be about climate change, with the younger generation politically energised about older people "stealing their future".
The reality was that many older people quietly voted out of fear that Labor threatened their savings. They may have been right and they may have been wrong - but the populist message got through beyond the better watering holes of our great cities where the big issue is whether to use a plastic straw.
The left in the United States doesn't know how to deal with Trump. Do the Democrats put an older white man up against him to win back red neck votes?
Or do they stick to gender and environmental issues which might seem less important to working and unemployed people in run down areas of America?
It's a question being asked closer to home.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
