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To be an artist is a guarantee to your fellow humans that the wear + tear of living will not let you become a murderer. Louise Bourgeois, diary entry, 27 August 1984

The first time I saw the Hackney house, a fat brown rat was squatting on the doorstep, snout tilted skywards, sniffing the kebab-and-spliff-scented air. I helped my mother out of the car and we huddled together on the pavement to stare at the rat, who, with an unblinking eye, stared back at us. We were North Londoners, the rat was an East Londoner.

I thought I’d pulled the whole perfect-Christmas thing off until halfway through cooking lunch on Christmas Day, I threw back my head, opened my mouth so wide I practically unhinged my jaw, bared my teeth and screamed at the ceiling as if I was being murdered, no doubt curdling all the (organic) bread sauces being stirred up and down our middle-class mews. Then I stabbed my best ceramic saucepan � the one I was about to parboil the potatoes in � with a carving knife. As the saucepan shattered all over the hob I remember wishing it had been a person (but I couldn’t think who it should be) because then I’d have been carted off to prison and wouldn’t have to pretend to be capable of looking after myself and being married and acting normally any more. I wasn’t strong enough after the treatment to pretend that. All I had enough energy for was loving my baby and thinking about colour.

After my cancer treatment ended I kept going back to the hospital for tests because I had constant diarrhoea and thought I might have bowel cancer � you can become a hypochondriac after surviving cancer. During the investigations a nurse said she was going to teach me how to evacuate my bowels correctly. First she tricked me by asking me to show her how I would push out a poo. I felt embarrassed but reminded myself I’d been a punk, screwed my face up, bore down and pushed my arse into the blue plastic chair with as much effort as possible, hoping I wouldn’t fart. ‘Aha!� said the nurse. ‘That’s how everyone thinks they should do it but it’s completely wrong and is very bad for your insides.� She told me that to shit properly you have to take a deep breath and gently expand your ribcage and your waist, making sure your breath goes to the sides of your body, not to the front � using the same muscles opera and bel canto singers use when they sing � and then the poo slides out without straining your insides. This is difficult for me to do because I’m in and out of the bathroom as fast as possible, not patient with the process at all. I can’t understand why anyone would want to sit on the bog reading. I feel claustrophobic in small rooms, and anyway it’s not good for your sphincter muscles to hang them over a bowl all opened up for ages. I use the method the nurse taught me whenever I remember, and it works every time. Forcing something, whether it’s a shit, a song or a relationship, never gets the best results. Force is aggressive, whereas bravery and determination, traits my grandmother had in abundance, are much more positive attributes.

Some women can block patriarchy out and get on with life, the same way our brains filter out most visual input to our eyes, because if we could see every molecule that’s out there, we’d go insane. I can’t block patriarchy out. I was trained by my mother to notice it, to seek it out and to fight it.

Something I’ve learned from the past and all the dates I’ve been on is to just let a person be who they are. If they do something that makes you uncomfortable or doesn’t work for you, tell them. If they don’t or can’t adjust and it doesn’t bother you too much, ignore it. If it does bother you, leave. That’s what I always do. Leave. I thought that’s what everyone did. When a relationship hits an obstacle you say mean things and then you leave. That’s the way my parents did it.

One October evening in 2010 I set off with my guitar, pedals and a couple of changes of clothes to play a solo gig in York. It was a small, intimate venue and everyone there had paid to see me, except four men sitting at a front table. I later discovered they were a boss and his three male employees, who’d been given tickets as part of a work bonus. They shouted and caroused through my first four songs, which is fine in a big venue but not a tiny one. They were louder than me as I only had my guitar with its tinny, trebly sound for accompaniment. After the fourth song I asked them to keep it down because other people were finding it difficult to hear, but they ignored me. I felt like I was their mother asking if they had any washing they wanted doing. After they continued to shout through the next song I suggested they go to the bar if they wanted to make a noise, but they didn’t move or stop yelling. Instead of the audience witnessing Viv-Albertine-the-ex-punk come back to shake them up, they saw a middle-aged woman being disrespected and ignored. I had two choices: give up and let people see a woman try and fail to be respected, or fight. I decided to fight.

I unplugged my guitar, jumped off the podium and walked over to the men’s table. It comes back to you, your punk attitude, when you need it. They were sitting in a semicircle with their pints lined up in front of them and looked up in unison with What you doing over in our corner, Ma? We didn’t ask for extra peanuts! expressions. ‘Do you know how the way you’re behaving makes me feel?� I asked. They shook their heads. I was surprised they responded. A mistake on their part. ‘Like this.� I picked up the fullest pint glass on the table and, starting at the bloke on my right, swept the beer in an amber arc across the four blank faces, ending up with the bloke on the far left. None of them moved. They just sat there with their eyes and mouths wide open, dripping. The room fell silent. The four of them were quiet for so long it felt as if time had stretched and was suspended between us, like chewing gum pulled out of your mouth to see how long you can get it. Triumph surged up through my body and went right to my head. I lifted another glass from the table and drenched them again, this time in Guinness. Out of the corner of my eye I saw some members of the audience step backwards into the shadows.

The scariest-looking man stood up (he wasn’t big but he had a feral glint in his eye), reddening with rage and clenching his fists. I remembered what Sid Vicious taught me about fighting: Do the worst thing you can think of first. Except I threatened the worst thing first. ‘If you want to take it outside, let’s take it outside,� I said, putting the hardest, coldest look I could muster into my eyes. ‘And I’ll put this bottle in your face.� I picked up an empty bottle of Heineken with such fluidity of movement you’d think I did this sort of thing every day. The feral man sat down. The four of them muttered between themselves, then gathered up what was left of their drinks and headed towards the bar. The DJ put a jolly record on to signal that that was the end of the night, but I hopped back on stage, said ‘I haven’t finished yet� into the microphone and played the rest of my set. Quite a lot of the audience had left by then, but those who remained saw that the spirit of punk was alive and well, and completely out of place, in a middle-aged woman with an electric guitar, in an underground bar in York.

I’m sure that my choice of when and where to resort to � or threaten to resort to � violence must seem peculiar and unnecessary to most people, but the times I choose to be violent are the times that seem necessary to me.

Later that night I came across the boss of the group at the bar. He was talking to the barman, all excited that he’d been part of the night’s ‘entertainment�. We smiled at each other and I said I hoped his top wasn’t expensive. ‘It was actually,� he replied. ‘It’s Ralph Lauren.�