GIRL TALK: Column

My birthday, my rules, no discussion
It doesn't matter how old you get (and believe me, I'm feeling pretty old right now), I have decided that, after exactly 33 years on God's good Earth, you're never, ever, too old to act like a spoiled brat on your birthday.
As I write this (yesterday), I have turned another year older, and although I have been up since 6am, lost a squash game and found myself sitting at my desk by 8am like any other day, I am about to shut up shop and be a birthday girl.
Ever since I turned 26 and my perkiness about birthdays began to droop along with other parts of me, I have avoided celebration and excess and treated my birthday like any other day.
With the exception of the odd gift before breakfast and perhaps a store-bought lunch, in my mind, the less attention my age got, the better.
Until now.
Perhaps it is the wisdom of age, perhaps just acceptance that it's only going to get worse from here on in, but I have found a type of peace inside me as I get older. So, instead of regretting the passing of the years, I am instead celebrating that, compared with some, I will always be young.
The trick to feeling youthful at any age must surely start with surrounding yourself with older people.
Although I got thoroughly whipped, my squash buddy is 47 and so, of course, she greeted the news of my 33rd birthday this morning with joyous yet distinctly jealous congratulations.
It almost made up for losing.
In the spirit of being spoiled, I am about to head off on a horse trek with a long liquid lunch halfway at Clearview winery. Again, with friends in their 40s.
This afternoon, I will relish my newly fashionable cougar status by being treated to a birthday surprise by my younger man and then move on to dinner and drinks with a group of friends and family who, it now occurs to me, are almost without exception older than I am.
When it comes to age, perception is nine-tenths of the law and, as I've always maintained, you're as old as the man you feel. And I feel great.
In an unprecedented and delightfully unprofessional move, I have turned down well-paid work for today and gone one step further: I even turned down a wedding booking for the same date next year, too.
I didn't even pretend I was already booked.
I owned up to the fact that 11.11.11 would be my 34th birthday and I wholly intended to abandon my job and do something as absolutely fabulous as the date itself.
The couple were as stoked about the idea as I was.
When it comes to celebrating life, particularly the start of your own, no amount of income and advancement can compensate for the joy that comes from taking one day out of the year to feel fabulous, unique and a little bit special.
It is a day when we should book massages, spend copious amounts of money on unnecessary things and eat all the forbidden foods which we deny ourselves every other day of the year.
After all, calories don't count on birthdays and public holidays.
So now, at 9am, as the day gears up, I am signing off from you, dear readers, and heading off to do something absolutely fabulous to celebrate another year on planet Earth.
Tomorrow, I will wade through the emails, the phone calls, the photographs waiting for me on my computer ... but today is, unashamedly, all about me.