"My job title has changed this week from rider to support team, as the snow and ice have played havoc with our roads. The gritting lorries seem to dislike my area! Each morning, I wake up and look out the window and another layer of snow has fallen. I do love it, but would rather see this sight when I'm skiing in France! Without the enviable indoor school or covered walker it means a lot of hard work and salt.

However, the week began as normal, if not a little cold. I had more lessons with Anna which proved incredibly rewarding as the horses had not only improved from the week before but also during the lesson. Harry was much more settled, we worked on stretching him as he has a naturally very good outline but is not so easy to stretch down. This is the same with Imp who has made big progress in the last week and Kenny was star of the day as he is really starting to relax and enjoy the work more and more. Exciting times...

I also had lessons with John Thelwall. I jumped Bertie first, I find him quite keen in canter but after repeating the exercise again and again he soon settled and jumped superbly. I'm very excited about him and he keeps exceeding expectations. Charlie behaved perfectly, as was his jumping, again just working on single fences. Harry too jumped well, we realised I have to put much more leg on than I had previously thought and the response was significant. Lastly, I tried Kenny in a Pelham which he seemed to love and jumped fantastically. In fact the last fence I jumped looked rather big so I had a quick look later and saw it was 1m 50. Well, I was impressed with that until I saw the Puissance [at Olympia] the other night!

Sadly, I decided not to go to Towerlands on Wednesday due to a lack of competitors and snow. I hear it was the the last show on a Wednesday, a real shame as we lack good facilities in this area and as event riders we are not free at the weekends to go jumping. Norton Heath wisely cancelled their dressage as well, shame as I'm now very busy until end of January so I'll do well to get out before then again.

So as there are no competitions, there's only one thing left to do: spend money in town on more Christmas shopping and get my hair cut! I've got some great presents this year for everybody so I hope they like them!

The horses had a couple of days off on Friday and Saturday, so I used this time to practise my craniol-sacro on the horses. I now do all my own physio on the horses and I'm really proud of how they feel - their muscles are so much softer and the fact that they are working so well also gives the right signs that my efforts are helping. I hope to qualify next year so I can then treat other people's horses too.

Charlie Unwin came to see me on Thursday and discuss psychology in more detail. I really enjoyed the presentation and wanted to take it to a deeper level. I found the discussion we had fascinating, and I see correlations between my very successful years. I also realise that I don't put enough down on paper which I must do. Whether it be a weeks schedule for the horses or their long term plans, I tend to store too much in my head and plan to change this! I really recommend anyone who is interested in using a psychologist to do so as I have found it fascinating and wouldn't have been convinced a few weeks ago, so just watch and see what happens next year, I think it's going to be a good one.

Until then I'll wade through the snow and hope my horses aren't too crazy by the time I get to hack and jump them again!

Happy Christmas, everybody!"