"Welcome back to my blog in the run up to the Longines Royal International Horse Show.

The leaning tower of sponsorship

A relatively quiet week here at Hickstead as everyone has their heads down, organising hard for the beginning of the build next weekend. When I said heads down, I do of course mean they are actually physically buried under paperwork! In today’s digital world we do hope to have less paper but the problem is you have to make back ups of everything! It has also become clear this week that mountains of files and paperwork are not just bad for your health in an over worked type of way, but also in a severe pedicure damaging way, as found out by Catherine. I have warned her numerous times that her haphazard ‘filing’ system (if you can call it that, it is in rather the balancing of a million heavy sponsorship files at precarious angles all on top of each other on her desk!) would cause her injury. I have to admit I did laugh a lot yesterday when I heard a crash and turned round to see her sitting on the floor clutching a sore toe and swearing, after the entire leaning tower of sponsorship files came crashing down on top of her and actually knocked her off her chair! It could have been very nasty; I knew working in sponsorship could be bad for your general sanity, but really!  

From mini mes to maxi cobs

So deeply buried in entries processing are the jumping and showing departments that you’re lucky if you’re met with more than a cursory groan when walking into their office. However, it has been birthdays galore this week. So much cake has been consumed that one of our male colleagues had the cheek to suggest the gorgeous ladies would soon be less mini mes (miniature ponies - our fond, slightly jealous name for all our annoyingly pretty thin colleagues) and more maxi cobs! Charming, and also three words: pot, kettle, black – you know who you are, Edward Bunn.

Horsey assets

We’ve also been doing a lot recently to make sure that we are reaching out into the local community, and to try and make people aware what a fun day out Hickstead is even if you’re not particularly horsey. Well, Jess (one of the aforementioned mini soon to be maxi cobs) managed to reach out very well but for all the wrong reasons. Feeling particularly pleased with herself for managing to get so many people to fill out the data capture forms, and assuming it was because of her analytical little sale presentations, she was rather put out when nearly all the men said they couldn’t give a stuff about the horses, fun fair, shops, etc. they just wanted to come to see pretty girls like her! Whatever works I suppose.

The Aachen leg of the FEI Nations Cup™ Competition is today and we’re all on tenterhooks to see who will come out victorious as the last competition before us. I must go and do some work now but please stay tuned to for my next blog as things begin to hot up next week and don’t forget to enter the promo code BLOG3 at http://www.hickstead.co.uk/general-information/competitions-offers.aspx to win tickets to the Longines Royal International Horse Show."