“I’m writing this blog quite stressed out! Annabel is clamouring to leave – we have to walk over to the farm and pick up the turkey with the sledge. There’s so much snow here still that that’s the easiest way. We’ll stick the turkey on the sledge and pull it back. Fun for the children, but frankly I’d rather be using the car!

Olympia memories

Olympia seems like a long time ago now. The kur went well and Rimmer went out and enjoyed himself. I did miss the first two time change, but despite minor panic, I carried on and pretended I hadn’t wanted the first one and still managed to fit them in, luckily. We got the ones on the centre line which was great.

I must say, having a 9pm is not the easiest thing in the world with two kids, that was pretty testing. But Rimmer enjoyed it, and at his age that’s really important.

He was incredibly hot in the warm up though, I literally couldn't touch him with my right spur. He kept warning me ‘if you touch me, I’m off!’ so I had to decide whether to just sit quietly or to insist that he let me ride him.

Overall we had a great and extrememly hectic time. Annabell loved every second of it apart from the War Horse demo – she thought that was terrifying and she was screaming so much I had to take her out.

We all stayed down in London on the Wednesday night and kept an eye on the weather forecast. In the morning we drove the four hours home, arriving just in time for another colossal dump of snow.

Best laid plans

I had planned to hit the ground running and had entered My Hyde for competitions on the Saturday and the Sunday, but everything was cancelled due to the snow.

To add to my delight at the not being able to compete, the boiler conked out on Saturday so we had no heating or hot water, and overnight it was -10 outside! To add insult to injury we had a burst water main on the Sunday, so no water at all. Maybe we should have stayed in London.

It took two days to get the water back on, but thankfully we are all up and running (haha) now.

After this second bout of show, we’ve lost the arena again. Yesterday Annabel was out there riding round on Jessie her Shetland while I was digging and scraping round the edges. I’m sure most riders had better prep for Olympia than we did!

We’re so limited with the weather over Christmas here now. Simon’s parents were going to come up and stay with us, but they didn’t fancy getting stuck on the M1 (at at ninety-something who can blame them?).

Christmas calling

So Christmas looks like it’s going to consist of desperately trying to get the horses working somehow –  Clyde (My Hyde) is just being lunged at the moment and I walk Rimmer under saddle as it’s safer than letting him loose on the lunge. We do a lot of piaffe in hand. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes not. It must be five or six weeks of this stupid snow now, I’ve never known it this bad. Suppose it’s our own silly fault for living in the Peak District.

So these next few weeks will be quiet-ish. Simon will make the dinner on Christmas day, I’ll try and entertain the children and the horses will have the day off. Rimmer will go out in his paddock – he has to have a smaller area to stop him getting up a head of steam and hooliganing about like a fruitloop.  

Mr Hyde is now out at Medium and I hope to qualify him for the advanced medium regionals in the new year when he will be rising six. His Medium regionals are in February which I’m sure will come around fast. Other than that, I’ll carry on doing the local pony club stuff, helping the kids with their ponies.

I’ve just looked out of the window and I can see that it’s started snowing again. Joy. It was very pretty but now I’d like it to go away. Must go and get the turkey before it’s too icy for even the sledge!

Merry Christmas and happy new year everyone.”