Well the first day of my 27th year has dawned.

On this day Jim Henson died, the first Japanese woman climbed Everest and the first Academy Award was presented. The British No. 1 on my birthday was Rivers of Babylon by Boney M. Not the worst but a week earlier and I would have had Night Fever by the Bee Gees.

I used to love my birthdays but I am starting to be very wary of them now. Most of my friends are older than me and scorn me for my relative youth when I say this to them.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the whole cake and presents aspect but its the “What have I done, where am I going” questions that hit me on the day that take the gloss away. I feel like I should have climbed mountains, visited countries whose names I can’t pronounce, learnt more languages or eaten weird foods. I feel I should have a “career” instead of a job. At the very least, I feel I should have passed my driving test!

But this year I lay awake last night and pondered these things and an annoying voice tried to butt in on my melancholy. When I listened to it I suddenly felt a lot better about embarking on my 27th year. Its easy to lose sight of what you have when the drudge of everyday life sets in – work, eat, decorate house, sleep – rinse and repeat.

What I have is a house which, when finished, will be great. I have a job that after years of crap jobs, I really love. I have a boss who buys me fancy presents – Benefit make up!! and co-workers who will buy me cake later today. I have finally found a career path to follow and with a bit of luck and some hard graft, I hope to be a solicitor some day. I have some amazing friends who can cheer me up with just a text or e-mail and always make me laugh. I have a wonderful family – now extended to wonderful in-laws.

And most importantly of all, in exactly two months time, I will have been married for one year to the one man who keeps it all together for me. He forces me to drink Alka Seltzer when I am hungover and can’t get out of bed. He laughs at my terrible jokes. He sits and watches America’s Next Top Model and Extreme Makeover with me even though he hates them. He lets me read Heat magazine to him every Wednesday. He is accepting of my dangerous shoe habit. Frankly, what more could a girl want in a man?

Not bad for work for 27 years, I would say. Or should I say 25B. I was told a wonderful new trick for dealing with your age. Say you turn 30 you would actually be 29A. Then at 31 you are 29B and so on. You might sound like a bus route but you will always feel young!

Now…where’s that cake

Bewleys announced today that they will be reopening their Grafton Street premises in May. It will be managed by the men behind Café Bar Deli, Odessa, Eden and the Market Bar which means the food will be decent at last. It will have four separate areas including a café and patisserie on the ground floor, a fish restaurant and a restaurant serving Mediterranean type food. The theatre will also be back in action on the top floor of the building and will include cabaret and jazz performances in the evening time. Well, I suppose it can’t all be good news.

I am delighted that its back. There is no decent eaterie on the street and very few Irish owned businesses. Its a beautiful building and with the right management, it will return to its status of being “An Institution” minus the bad coffee and bad food. I’m told they will have a working coffee roasting machine in the lobby which will make a welcome change to the current olfactory delights of Grafton Street – the McDonalds bins and the traffic fumes.

I have high hopes for this new venture but let us all share a moment of reflection for the sticky cherry bun…

We all have dreams. World peace, winning the lotto, taking a round the world trip, having the power of invisibility, you know the kind of thing. I would like those things too but my current passion is to own a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes. Winning the lotto or having the power of invisibility would be useful to reach this aim but I’m not greedy. All I want is €500 with the proviso that I can only spend it on a pair.

I visit them in here Brown Thomas sometimes. I stroke them and whisper that I will own them one day and that they just have to be patient. I trawl eBay for mispellings that may lead to pair for half nothing or a pair that no-one will have noticed. I’m still waiting. I bought myself the Habitat shoehorn that he made which made me giddy with joy. Its a start.

If I were to end up with a pair, I think I would have to keep them seperate from my other shoes (all 30 something of them) so that my faithful pairs wouldn’t get jealous. I would also have to get myself the lifestle that warrants only travelling from car to bar with soft carpets in between. Perhaps winning the lotto may be the way to go after all.

Mr Blahnik, I salute you.

(by the way, its my birthday next month and I am a really, really nice person)