So the road to Pau CCI 4 star continues and Sammi made her 2nd ERM appearance for the season but this time with Hunter Valley ( Gizmo). The Court Jester didn't get much further than the dressage at Barbury so the pressure is on for Giz to give Sammi a great result.

They sure looked pretty amazing in their lesson with Alex Franklin this morning. Hels has Giz looking fantastic, a ball of muscle and an amazing coat. They rocked up to the warm up looking a million dollars and then somehow I ended up with supervision of Charlie Birch and I lost track of Sammi and Giz.

Rather oddly it turns out that Charlie Birch has a fascination with whips. Whether this is inherited from Sammi or Ed is a mystery that I would rather not delve into but having nearly had my eye poked out a few times I removed said whip. Whoa... that is some noise that Charlie can make! We made a deal over the pram versus leaving pram... I basically said he could leave the pram in the collecting ring if I either carried him or he held my hand but if he broke the rules he was back in the pram. To be fair to Charlie he looked as though he understood this contract so I then looked genuinely maternal for long enough for Alice Fox-Pitt to point her ERM cameras at me and laugh hysterically. This situation fell apart when genuine Aussie Shane Rose taught Charlie how to drum his heels against the fencing to create a hugely distracting noise just as Sammi completed her test. At this point I had to ask the crowd how Sammi went as I had missed most of her test and was trying to force Charlie back in the pram. I had forgotten how small children can make themselves rigid to avoid such things so I am now looking helplessly around for mother of child or Hels... Hels appeared tied up with the horse and Sammi had disappeared for interviews. Crap. Poke said child in tummy area and do up pram belts as they fold over. Job done.

Sammi then rode Giz back whilst dressage guru Alex fumed all the way back to the stables at Gizmo's " lack of concentration, focus, what the hell he thought he was doing going backwards after a halt blah blah" and we meanwhile hit the buggies. Charlie was happy to sit in the middle with me whilst I told Hels she could simply tow the pram behind, no need to fold it up. Then we backed up to a buggy with Tom McEwen and Holly Woodhead who had just finished an 8/9 year old test. Tom rode Giz last year so whilst Alex filled him in on all of Giz's faults at a thousand decibels our driver shunted us up close. Presumably for the sake of his hearing.

Tom had a puppy belonging to Holly tucked up in his jacket and was looking rather smug about it so I hoisted Charlie Birch off his seat and hung him over the edge to show what my prize of the day was. To be fair to Charlie he dealt with this sudden out of space experience manfully with just a small gulp at being hung over the side of a buggy for a sort of out of body experience. Hels then made some noises and we turned around to discover that Charlie's pram had turned into some sort of Harry Potter parody as it bounced and leapt off the ground, tried to flip, nearly did, got hooked up on the end of the buggy... wow, it sure would have been exciting if we had left Charlie in it!

So, to sum up, Sambo and Giz scored a 44 which is actually really cool as although they are in 17th they are just 11 points off the lead...

And just for the record, no small children or animals were injured today. A small miracle!