"Oh, what a day! They say that your body has a natural defence system that eradicates traumatic experiences from your memory and this must be what happens year on year, because boy had we forgotten what the first day of the season is like! But we’d also forgotten the fun, and the madness, and the excitement when the sun shines and everything looks beautiful and all of the year’s hard work finally comes to fruition… an excellent first day all in all.

First off was Hickstead-favourite William Funnell starting as he means to go on with a victory in the first class of the season, the Camardo Coffee 1.35m Open Championship. He said simply: "If I just win the first class of the show, and the last class of the show, I’ll be happy if I don’t jump even another clear round!" However, he couldn’t help himself and did in fact win the big class of this afternoon too, the Bunn Leisure Derby Tankard… Lets hope his winning streak lasts until Sunday evening – I have every faith!

Clearly overcome with all the excitement was our jumping secretary and there was a classic now you see her, now you don’t moment when she literally just keeled over on the spot in the middle of a class. In this incidence I do actually believe protestations of a bad knee, and too much heat, and there were rather loud hoots of laughing ringing around the showground when I tried to console her by reminding her that the very same thing had happened to me at last year’s sponsors’ barbecue… Unfortunately this comment was heard by someone, who quickly reminded me (and the rest of the office) about the one too many glasses of Champagne Pommery I’d inhaled beforehand!!

We have changed television broadcasters at this meeting for the first time in 50 years and the main reason the sponsorship department is still here this late is because we have been puzzling over the new camera angles to ensure our branding gets the best possible exposure! The coverage promises to be exceptional, as they have nearly double the amount of cameras that we have had in previous years. In the OB truck today, the boys were showing off their new slow-mo camera, and you could honestly see the hairs up a horse’s nose, the detail was so amazing! However as a result of their snazzy technology, and one particular half a million pound camera (we refer to it as the ‘uppy downy thing’, and are frequently chastised… “for half a million quid Daisy, you can blinkin well call it by its proper name!” the Director has been heard to mutter!) we really have to think about it!

We had the launch today for Alan Smith’s brilliant new book, Hickstead: A Golden Celebration, which was very exciting and very touching when Alan spoke and said how proud he was of the book, considering it a great testament to a long and successful career, and a fitting tribute to my late Dad. Alan began his career in equestrian journalism in the same year that Dad started Hickstead, and the two were the greatest of friends. The books are flying off the shelves and there’s a furious competition to see who can sell the most – there’s a pretty good prize at the end of the season for the winner so watch this space!

I must be off now but also worth mentioning were Geoff Osborne’s brilliant back to back wins in the British Private Driving Derby and the Supreme Trade Turnout Championship. Oh… and Catherine and I nearly missing a presentation because we were ‘visiting our sponsors on their trade stands’ (read: SHOPPING!) Oops, she’s going to kill me for telling everyone that, but at least we provided the entire showground with a giggle when the tv cameras caught us hot footing it back to the presentation gate at speed from the other end of the showground! Oops!"