Message from Alan Maley

In 2020 I invited members of C Group to contribute to a collection of poems on the theme of the Covid Pandemic.  This was launched as A Viral Time Warp on the C Group website later that year.  Concurrently, I edited a collection of poems on the same theme, titled Something in the Air, published by Our Glass Publishing.  And in 2021, I followed this up with another collection; The New Normal on the theme of the Pandemic a year on.  These two publications included poems both from C group and non-C group members.  HLT Mag has been publishing extracts from these collections.

Oh my, you have a lot of washing up waiting for you, haven’t you? And the floor could do with a good sweep …  oh my goodness  you certainly have a lot of flour here… and  look it’s all got weevils in! And what are all these loaves of home baked bread – at least a dozen ? They’re all stale now …  Oh look – you have an old appointments list on the fridge: dinner with Sadie, weekend with Jo in Madrid – how nostalgic – are you keeping it as a treasured memory? It’s a bit yellowed at the edges now.

Yes, let’s go into the living room, but I need to step over this pile of empty wine bottles and old chocolate wrappers…  And there are some old masks and bottles of hand sanitiser ? Remember that if an object is unused it is stripped of its dignity. And this clock has stopped… What ? Time has lost its meaning for you in the last months? Well let’s give it a good wind up and get it going  again. There, now you can live in the present and practise mindfulness.

If you’ll excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom…. I could hardly get in the door because of the piles of toilet paper – are you sure you need all that? Yes, I am sure you can find a use for it, but does toilet paper  spark joy?  And I also  had a peep in your bedroom wardrobe – most of your clothes are covered in cobwebs and they all have moth holes in.  But your track pants are completely worn out! And if you don’t mind me saying, several of the dresses and jeans look a tad too small for you now. Trying to do up the zip on  a tight pair of jeans may produce negative feelings – and  remember, we  must always accentuate the positive.

And look at you – you have a Chanel jacket on top  but pyjama  bottoms below. Not a felicitous combination… Oh, OK,  for zoom meetings, I understand – but I think you need to ask yourself which half sparks joy…