Pride and addiction

I've decided the deadly sin of pride can live in us in unexpected ways. You see, what I realized the other night was that I'm proud of the fact that I can drink coffee. Isn't that weird? To be more specific, coffee doesn't affect me, meaning I can drink a cup at say eleven o'clock at night and be asleep fifteen minutes later. The problem, of course, is that coffee's not actually good for me. After all, it's poison for the heart, not to mention the effect on my liver and the acid-alkalyne balance.

So I struggle with the addiction. Yes, I give up coffee entirely from time to time. But it's a bit like my cousin. She was indignant when her naturopath told her she was addicted to coffee.
"No, I'm not!"
"Well, see if you can do without for three months."
Yes, she cut it out for three whole months just to prove him wrong. And told him so. But, within a few days, she was quaffing the caffeine brew again.
Heigh ho.

Afterglow

As Mothers' Day draws to a close, I look out my window. Across the street, the houses are bathed in sunset's afterglow, such a magical phenomenon to see. My very first experience of this was breathtaking -- rolling hills in South Africa bathed in reflected pink light. So even if we're already experiencing the kind of dip in temperature associated with the days of the ice saints, I'm feeling the warmth.

For me the day has meant quite a bit of musing about what my own mother meant to me, and reflecting on her long life with much gratitude. She would have been 99 on the 15th of May, but passed over a month before her 98th birthday. How very, very fortunate I was to have her gentle yet strong presence in this world for so many decades. And still I sense her sheltering love. So it seems fitting to do her honour, to keep her memory dear and be inspired by her example.

Exclamation marks!!!!!

Part of my (strictly limited) daily time on line consists of checking out two British news websites: the BBC and the Guardian newspaper. The other day I was delighted to read an article titled "The return of the exclamation mark."

Now, I know I don't usually blog about writing matters, but this struck a chord with me. The gist of the article was that use of exclamation marks in composition used to be frowned upon, but emails and blogs have changed all that. And I'm glad of it! I think there've been some arbitrary 'good writing' rules that for me are just nonsense. I mean, why not use an exclamation mark? It's a perfectly valid form of punctuation, and if we're now swinging towards using far too many, so be it.

Then there's that other 'good writing' rule which says you should prefer 'he said', or 'she said' above all other dialogue tags. Surely this cuts out a whole lot of useful words, and English, by its nature, is blessed with an abundance of words. For instance, it's not considered good to use he murmured, he burst out, she cried, she insisted and so on. Personally, I think it's nonsense. I mean, how do you react to these two sentences?

'How beautiful,' she said.

'How beautiful!' she exclaimed.

Doesn't the second version call up more of a response in you?