1982 - Flexipop  (UK)
 "Welcome to the Working Week"

Robert Smith of The Cure has the weirdest week in the entire history of this page.
 God it is weird…

WEDNESDAY
It's been a very strange week for me because it's the first time for nearly two years that I've stayed at home with plenty of time to myself. I live in Crawley with my mum and dad, though they are away at the moment visiting my brother in Wales, so I've got the house completely to myself.
This morning I got up at 10:30, which is very early for me. Normally I never get up before mid-day, but I had to make an effort to get up this morning in order to go to the hairdresser's.
I lay in bed for an hour or so thinking about the dreams I'd had during the night. I've taught myself to remember my dreams and write them all down, because they help me to write songs. I sometimes read one of my dreams before going to sleep at night too, so that I can carry on having the same dream from one night to the next.
Once I'd get out of bed I had a drink of coffee. I drink coffee and tea throughout the day because it stops me eating. I find that food makes me sluggish and some days I don't eat anything at all. It becomes quite easy after a while because your stomach closes up so that you don't want any food.
Then I went to have my hair done – which was probably the worst move of my life. I had it put into zigzag crimpy bits and it's ended up looking like a hat. Before. It was all straight and sticking out. It made me look really mental, which was really great because no-one came near me.
After that, I went for my walk, which I do every night at about three in the morning. I go through a big park nearby which has ornamental gardens and fountains. It's quite a refreshing feeling – you never know if someone's going to jump out and hit you. It's nice having fear for a while.

THURSDAY
I ate today. Mary and I bought a meal from a Chinese take-away. In the afternoon there was a massive thunderstorm which went on for about an hour and I decided to take my walk during it. I got very wet as I didn't have a coat on – just a T-shirt.
I returned home and watched a video of some programmes I'd recorded off the television – a few short cartoons, a programme about learning to play the guitar and some early-morning shows for Arab-speaking people.
I also like to watch feature films on my video. There's a kid nearby who runs a shady video-shop from his house and for £1 per night you can get hold of any video you want – unfortunately he hasn't got any snuff-movies yet though, but he's working on it.
In the evening, Mary and I sat in the back garden talking. The garden is the best thing about the place because it's full of trees and the neighbors can't see in. we stayed there until about 4 o'clock in the morning.

FRIDAY
I spent most of the day clearing the rubbish out of my bedroom. It's been accumulating ever since Christmas. I had to climb over a mountain of rubbish just to get to my bed – old magazines, films, apples, all sorts of things. It took me five hours to clear it all out.
Then I replied to letters that people had written to me, asking about the cure's songs and so forth. I always make my replies obtuse, obscure and brief. I think that people always treasure them more when they can't understand what they mean.
After that I read for a while. This week's books are called “sanity, madness and the family” and “the language of madness'.
I bought these after we did the video for 'charlotte sometimes' in an old asylum which had been disused since the 'fifties. I found a cupboard in the patients' art room, which was crammed with their paintings and sculptures. I took some of the sculptures to put in my room – there was one of a head which was really grotesque.
When I came across “the language of madness' in a bookshop, I noticed that it had a drawing by a mental patient which looked very like this head, so I bought it. That book has actually inspired some of the lines on the 'pornography' album, especially in a song called 'a short term effect' – “a charcoal face bites my hand” – that was a nightmare that one of the patients had. He would draw people in charcoal and they would come to live in his dreams.
Friday was this week's day of madness for me. There's always one day in the week devoted to the subject.

SATURDAY
I spent a lot of Saturday in bed. In the afternoon, there was a football match on telly, so I sat in the garden and watched it through the window.
Then I had a phone-call from the choreographer of the royal ballet, asking me to write some music for them. I like ballet and I'm going to make a film of Mary ballet dancing – but only of her feet. We're going to make it in the garden, but we'll have to be careful that nobody's around because the outfits we wear are pretty provocative. I can't describe exactly what they're like because Mary's mum buys Flexipop!
Mary and I were playing football in the garden this evening when suddenly my dad appeared in the doorway – we hadn't seen him for days – and he started to take pictures with a camera. That was a bit embarrassing, because Mary only had a see-through blanket on.
We dress up a lot when we're alone. Today I dressed up as my mum and cooked a curry. There's always an undercurrent of insanity which goes on in private.

SUNDAY
There is an atmosphere to Sunday which I like. I enjoy watching old couples going out for walks. Everything moves so slowly – like a dream. We spent part of the day pretending to be an old couple, then we watched some football and, later on, a video of a film called 'the shout', which gave me wonderful “mental” dreams that made me wake up a few times. I don't ever have nightmares as such because even dreams that scare me I enjoy.

MONDAY
I spent the whole of Monday writing a song. I went out into the garden to record 'concrete music' – trains, planes birds and trees, then I made a tape out of them all. In the evening, Mary and I stayed in and drank (I never go out to pubs). A great joy is making up cocktails. I mix all sorts of drinks together. Milk cocktails are always best – they sit very well on your stomach. One of the worst I ever invented was called 'dennis the menace' – it gave me the most chronic hangover I've ever had in my life. It had about seventeen different drinks in it, all mixed up in a pint mug.

TUESDAY
The most dynamic day of the week. I got up at ten o'clock in the morning and drove to London to see 'Star Wars' and 'The Empire Strikes Back' at the Odeon, Marble Arch. There were only four other people in the whole cinema – a mum and dad and their two children. The children started running up and down and I couldn't think why they were doing it. Then I realized that the soundtrack was in quatrophonic and they were starting at the front and running to the back to follow the spaceships shooting overhead. So I decided to join in and spent the rest of the time running up and down this huge, empty cinema.
I came out of that at about seven o'clock and went to see Steve Severin at the studio where the Banshees were recording their new album. We got drunk, as normal, then I got a cab back to the record company's offices, staggered in and collapsed into bed.