Three Things That Happened to Me This Week That Were More Punk Than the Punk Met Gala Ball

Or, to give this column its full title:

THREE THINGS THAT HAPPENED TO ME THIS WEEK THAT WERE MORE PUNK THAN THE PUNK MET GALA BALL AT WHICH THE MOST GLAMOROUS PEOPLE IN THE WORLD ATTACHED A SAFETY PIN TO THEIR COLLECTIVE BLOUSON AND GOT BURBERRY TO PUT SOME STUDS ON A RUFF AND DEEMED IT ANARCHY. 1) I was in a Pret a Manger on Tuesday, eating both a hot meatball wrap and a cold avocado one because I couldn’t decide which to have so I had both. I was punk. I was wild. I was as wild as Barbara Hutton the Woolworths billionaire, making them change the sweetness levels in the local Coca-Cola processing plant in Marrakech. I even ate in. Paid that additional 75p not to sit outside in the street in a blowing gale; that VAT extra they describe on that little sign on the till as a “nightmare”. I sat there with my silver tray and my two lunch options and thought, this is what it is to be carried on a sedan chair through the streets of Rome. Rich. Greedy. Satisfied. Then a man came in and picked a pot of soup and a sandwich off the shelf and walked straight out with them! And then a man who worked there bolted out the door and down the road after him, tackled him outside Victoria Station, strolled back into the shop with the stuff as cool as a cucumber wrap, while we all ogled this conquering hero, open mouthed, forgetting to exhale, our loins a little stirred. Until he put the soup and the sandwich back on the shelf and I thought EURGH, mate, I don’t know that I’d want to buy that now you’ve wrestled it from the thief’s hands. Surely some of the soup has spilled. I mean, I’ve never even managed to buy unstolen soup without it ending in a trip to the burns ward at the Royal Free. – Punk rating: 69 percent. 2) At a 90s karaoke night, where everyone else was young and beautiful and looked a certain way, there was a guy who didn’t know anyone, had a French-African accent, looked like he’d come straight from work, and was singing "Angels" by Robbie Williams like he wanted to burst a blood vessel. It was as if, for him, there used to be the world, and now there was just this song, this microphone, all of his body bleeding into loving angels insteeead. It was as if all of the stuff on the inside of his body, his innards, his blood cells, his organs and his cock and his balls and his brain matter, was moving to the outside through the course of a Robbie Williams homage. And through it aaaalllll. Offering you protection. A little love and affection. Down the waterfall. This dude was the waterfall. They say "Angels" is the most popular song at funerals. I couldn’t tell if this man was being born or dying. But by the end we had all stopped gawping at him and we were just singing along like we wanted to die and be born in the manner of his choosing, too. – Punk rating: 88 percent. 3) I was playing with my kid in the living room, who deposited in her nappy in the way that 19-month-olds do, and I thought, rather than carry her upstairs to the changing table I’ll actually ask her to come upstairs with me. She’s not really a baby any more, we can discuss this. But she refused to come. I went without her and thought, ah bless, she won’t last long without me, mummy mummy mummy, she’ll be up those stairs in a sec. But she didn’t come. I went on my phone, looked at Twitter, looked at my emails, liked 47 Instagram photos of lunch and trees.  Finally, I went back to look for her. Which is when I found that the ghost of GG Allin had been in there, coaxing her into the deeply performative act of taking her trousers off, taking her nappy off and smearing that shit all over the wallpaper. All up the stairs. Of course, GG Allin wouldn’t have bothered with such a performance without an audience of 50 and at least two video cameras. But my child is so committed to the purity of her scatalogical art that she’ll get her nappy off and shit all over everything for an audience of two unmoved teddies and a silent cat. She’ll shit in the bed if you let her. Dance around in it. She doesn’t care. And don’t tell me that GG Allin engaged in actual coprophagia (which is the eating of faeces) and that my daughter doesn’t, because I’ll take a deep breath, light a fag and tell you a story about something that I will later regret. – Punk rating: 100 percent.

Follow Sophie on Twitter: @heawood

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