"Here we go again...

With only a couple of days to go until the start of the Longines Royal International Horse Show of our Golden Jubilee year, the rollercoaster ride begins again.

A different beast

With an extra day of competition and nearly 20% more horses, riders and spectators at this show, the RIHS is always an entirely different beast from the Derby. With a feature class on every day, and Olympians from the disciplines of jumping, dressage and eventing all competing it promises to be a monumental year... now all we need to do is pray for sun!

Superflu

Every event organisers’ worst nightmare happened yesterday when it looked for a horrible moment like the entire office staff may be wiped out by some super vile, killer virus from hell… however, after initial foreboding everyone in fact does seem to still be alive and nearly back to normal (a loose terms at the best of times in our office!) although there are still a few comedy symptoms such as the trade stand manager having to wear sunglasses at his computer because one of the lovely symptoms seems to be hypersensitivity to light! Bono eat your heart out!

Tears for ice cream

There were a few other heart-stopping moments too when the it looked like our marquee provider had run out of marquees, due to the unbelievable last minute scramble for trade stands (we have an enormous waiting list that even the most trendy of London restaurants would be proud of!) although not as much as when one of the over stressed team (no names shall be mentioned) actually cried when she thought we’d run out of ice creams.

Shetlands on the wild side

Finally, we had a very special day at Hickstead earlier this week when some students from St Mary’s Catholic School in Croydon came down for a master class in conjunction with Sky Sports Living for Sport and the Youth Sport Trust. English and Irish internationals, my niece Lucy Bunn and David Simpson, put them through their paces including a riding lesson, a trip to the top of the infamous Derby bank and a hilarious game of ‘space hopper’ polo (yes it is as it sounds!) It was fantastic to see new people being introduced to the sport and I was amazed at how fearless they were about getting involved having never ridden before. My all-time highlight of the day was though when I got Lucy and David to ride some of the ponies, yes ponies, not horses, and really talked them up, ‘this is how the professionals do it etc,’ only for Lucy to get tanked out of the ring by a shetland!

The sacred imaginary list

I must go now as there are still a million things to do and my esteemed colleague Catherine has just chastised me with the charming words ‘I don’t care if its on your list, where is this magic list, nothing seems to ever come off this list!’ – so that’s me told! Back to work..."