Heather Fell, Olympic modern pentathlete silver medalist, writes about her life 'on and off' the track.

IT has been a sociable week, but it has all been scheduled around my training. With Christmas coming I wanted to spread the festive spirit so invited my neighbours around for mulled wine and mince pies. I'm not sure I should confess to it but I bought mine, although I do think I should get points for adding fruit and cloves to the mulled wine for authenticity. Having mentioned my festive gesture to a few friends I must admit to being surprised at their reaction, the majority of people asked me why.

It seems that the closer people live to their neighbours the less sociable they are; for example friends in London who have lived in a block of flats for two years have yet to meet one of their adjacent neighbours whereas at home in Devon we know all our neighbours even when the closest are 400m away. So I am not going to be deterred and will do my best to bring some country spirit to the city.

I have spent four nights out of the seven in a sleeping bag and three of them in my own flat. Living in only a two bed flat with a lodger doesn't leave much space for guests, so attempting to be a good host I tested out the sofa. My first guests were my sister and her husband who had possibly been enticed to Bath by the Wurzels gig rather than to see me, however I insisted on tagging along. This was my first experience of the ancient Westcountry band and not one that I will forget!

Once I had said goodbye to my second guests it was back to competition time.

I headed north for cross country on Saturday in Cheltenham and even further up the country to Sheffield for fencing on Sunday. Both competitions were valuable training — I have only one more competition left before Christmas and that's because there's only one weekend left.

Oh gosh, I need to do some shopping!