The Oxford English Dictionary defines an eclipse as "an obscuring of the light from one celestial body by the passage of another." And whilst we think a lot of our smoothies, to call them celestial might be pushing it a bit. Nevertheless, this week you will be able to witness the innocent spring eclipse, when the paths of our winter and spring seasonal smoothies cross on the shelves of nice shops all over the UK and Ireland. The stellar lesson that we learn from this event is that you only have a few days left in which to get your fill of winter's lemon, honey and ginger. But please don't be sad, because our new seasonal recipe for spring is delicious, and will soon become as much of a friend to you as the winter recipe was (spring recipe details and pictures right here next week).

Fruit Towers is not a place of conflict. We all live and work here very happily (a bit like The Monkees), and then in the evenings we go home to eat broccoli and watch documentaries about herons on the National Geographic channel. But recently all of the people who travel to work from south London have started to get fed up with the fact that we always go out in west London after work. Some of them even started to cry last week when we had our Friday night drink in Shepherds Bush, again. So this Thursday the South London Association of Virtuous innocent Employees (or SLAVE for short) will convene for its first meeting on the 'real' streets of south London. There are ten of us, and we are growing in number. Feel our strength...

Now here's a nice new healthy place where you can buy our drinks. It's called the National Aquatic Centre and it's in Blanchardstown just outside Dublin. When we first heard about it, we got quite excited, because we've always quite liked newts and algae and stuff. But then we found out that it's a place where people go to practise swimming and diving, so they're not that keen on newts and algae. The Centre opens on March 10th, and it looks pretty amazing - huge swimming pools with floors that rise and fall at the flick of a switch, Europe's biggest indoor water park, and lots of attractive people in their swimwear, which is always nice. Click here to find out more about the Centre, and remember, if you've just eaten some chips, swimming on a full stomach isn't very clever and usually makes you burp or get the hiccups.

As promised last week, here's some exciting news. Our new seasonal recipe for spring should be on the shelves this week, brightening up the corners of your local shop that might have been a bit dreary during the winter months. The recipe is lychees and passion fruits, which some of you may remember had a brief spell on the shelves last year. We've decided to give it a full season in order that you can get to know it a bit better, and also because we've found some very nice lychees and passion fruits that are screaming out to be made into smoothies. If you'd like to win a case of this strange and temporary delight, please email oohthatsabitexotic@innocentdrinks.co.uk by the end of Friday 14 March, telling us which is your favourite kind of monkey and why (30 words or less).

Here at innocent we are big fans of books. Books help us to become more intelligent, and they are very useful when it comes to propping open doors, pressing flowers and squeezing the not so nice juice out of aubergines before you commence cooking. A couple of years ago we wrote a little book called the innocent company rule book, which we give away free in places that sell our drinks, and which describes a bit about us, the drinks and our preference for Bridlington over Magaluf. So we were very pleased and surprised when this little book was granted Book of the Week status in Marketing magazine last week, especially as we wrote it quite a while ago. If you'd like a copy of this book, you can email your postal address to nicelittlebook@innocentdrinks.co.uk and we'll send you one on the house.

Whilst we're on about books we'd like to tell you about some of our favourites

Will - A Prayer for Owen Meany
Paul - Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Kylie - Rule #5: No Sex on the Bus
Ailana - The Odyssey
Richard - Cake Decorating and Sugar Craft
Daisy - Riders
Jon - Advanced Excel
Brett - The Cat in the Hat
Geoff - Catch 22

If you are Irish, it won't have escaped your attention that it's only a week until you celebrate St Patrick's Day by wearing a silly hat and getting a bit drunk. This year we're taking part in the St Patrick's Day Parade in Dublin, where we'll be driving along in our Dancing Grass Van and handing out drinks in the forlorn hope that you might choose one over a pint of Guinness. If you see us, come over and say hello to Barney, Mat and Peter, and if you get any photos of them looking the worse for wear, we would really love to see them.

Firstly, a word about fame, that fickle mistress whose wiles and ways have led many celebrities up the garden path, where everything seems nice and rosy for a while, before the fame runs out and they end up sitting on the compost heap of ignominy with only Russ Abbott and a slim panatella for company. We only spell out this stark warning for the good of our Peter over in Ireland, who will be appearing on TV3's Ireland AM - 'the nation's favourite breakfast show' - this Wednesday morning (http://www.tv3.ie/iream.htm). Peter will be making smoothies and showing off the Cow Van to a host of people sitting at home in their dressing gowns. Remember Peter - TV makes you look a bit chubbier than you actually are, so no chips till Thursday.

There's nothing we like better than getting a nice letter, apart from maybe being given an all expenses trip to the Maldives by a rich, kind uncle. Rich, kind uncles are a bit thin on the ground, so we settle for letters, including a lovely one from Mrs Housley in Sheffield. She starts off by addressing us as 'Friends...' instead of 'Dear Mr X...', which is a great start. She then goes on to outline how she saves up her empty bottles, cleans them all out and then takes them down to the local nursery school, where they get used as skittles. Genius. Mrs Housley is 77, and hopes to live till well over 100, with the help of our drinks. She has taken the lead in the innocent Nice Person of the Year 2003 stakes - if you'd like to enter a friend or relative, send us a nice letter.

Many thanks to all of you who sent in entries to the monkey competition last week. The response was overwhelming, and a team of highly trained and overwhelmed monkeys* are sifting through the replies to pick out a suitable winner. The verdict will be with you next week.

* us

It's that time again. Every two years the cream* of the food and drink industry gather to work out what the next big thing in crisp flavours is going to be at the International Food Exhibition (IFE), the UK's most important food and drink expo. Yet it only seems like yesterday that we were last at IFE, which of course is true, as it started yesterday and will carry on until Wednesday. Unfortunately, the only innocent person who won't be on the stand over the four days is Assia - our spies report that this year's show is more nut-focused than ever before, and her nut allergy would make it a very dangerous place to be indeed. The innocent people who went down on Sunday reckon that it's the biggest show we've ever been involved in, so we've got two stands (ST 4824 and ST 4825) to house us lot, the drinks, our dancing grass van and a cow van. If you want to nip down, visit http://www.ife.co.uk for info, or pop over to Excel in Docklands.

* hilarious pun intended

The RNID (Royal National Institute for the Deaf) is a cause worth mentioning, not least because they have been very kind to my Granddad in the past, and because they're going to help us work out which of our new secret smoothie recipes are good enough to make and put in the shops. This week we're nipping off to visit the people at the RNID, give them a taste of our new recipe ideas and ask them to fill in one of our complicated questionnaires (questions include "Did you like it?", "Come on, be honest, was it nice?" and "What's that nail varnish you're wearing?"). And we've heard that some of them got a bit excited when news of our arrival was spread via their intranet, as they already quite like our drinks. To be a bit serious for a moment, it's really important that we test out our drinks on nice people before we launch them, so if you work in a place with at least 40 people who would happily taste our drinks and help decide future recipes, let Lucy know at lucy@innocentdrinks.co.uk. Please write "Lucy, I love you and I want to help you do your taste tests" in the Subject box.

We think that we've used this headline before, but never mind - you can't ration love, as my Granny used to say when she was queueing up for powdered egg. And you really couldn't ration love, or its slightly less holistic cousin 'quite fancy', down here at Fruit Towers even if you tried. First of all, congratulations to our Peter, who recently became engaged to Caroline. He proposed up a mountain in Italy, which sounds quite nice. Then there is "the sexiest man in branding", or Richard as he's known to his mum. This week's Design Week magazine features a snippet about the aforementioned sexy man, who apparently "had much of the audience swooning at last week's launch of John Simmons' book The Invisible Grail" (a nice book that talks about innocent a bit). Read the article here. We also got an email from a lady called Emma who wanted a picture of Dan for her heart-shaped Boy Of The Week photo frame (we obliged), and Mat was given the phone number of a mystery admirer down at the aforementioned IFE show. Must be something in the water…

Thank you for entering the monkey competition a couple of weeks ago. Cases of our nice new recipe for spring are on their to Helen, whose favourite monkeys are ones without red bottoms, Peter, whose wife professes a liking for Pete Sampras, and Jeanette, who nominates her young son Joe Louis, specialist subject waking up early and asking penetrating questions such as 'Mummy, why doesn't hail cut you?'

Spring is the season of laying eggs, mowing the lawn and going to trade shows. We're a bit rubbish at the first two, but thankfully we are getting quite good at going to trade shows. Last week we were at IFE (hello to you if you came over and said hello to us), where they had a Theatre Of Cheese and everything. Over the weekend we were at the Vitality Show giving out lots of drinks and avoiding having our auras photographed, whilst this week Paul will be at Londis shows in Coventry and Doncaster. And finally, on Sunday and Monday 6th and 7th April we'll be at the Natural Products Show (stand 1309 at Olympia), saying hello to lots of nice natural people. After that, we'll put our trade show stand away and go and have a lie down for a day or two...

We are big fans of the visual and literary arts. In fact, there's nothing we like more than looking at a very nice painting or sitting under a tree to read a bit of poetry whilst wearing our special art-appreciating outfits, which consist of velvet coats with long tails, silk cravats and nice buckled patent leather shoes. To celebrate the glory of the arts, we have invited a very nice man to be the first ever artist-in-residence at Fruit Towers. He's called Ed Docx, and although he has foregone velvet jackets and buckled shoes in favour of jeans and trainers, he is nonetheless an author of some note. Ed is an old friend of ours and is having his first novel published in May - it's called The Calligrapher and is all about love and honesty and a bit of nakedness. In his role as artist-in-residence he will be sitting in the office this week, spending quite a bit of time checking his Hotmail, and answering any art-based questions such as "Would you say that if Tony Hart had been born in the 19th century he would be as famous as Van Gogh?" *

Congratulations are in order for Geoff and Jessica, two of the most handsome/beautiful people to have ever set foot in Fruit Towers. They're not getting married, but they have both just been promoted from within to do new and exciting jobs here at innocent. Geoff's official title is Merchandiser, excitingly enough. That means that he gets to go to all of the shops where we sell our drinks, and make sure that they're behaving themselves in their new home. He also makes friends with all of the shopkeepers who sell our drinks, so is pretty crucial to the practical success of actually selling our drinks.

Meanwhile, Jessica is now in charge of special events, so will be responsible for making sure that our birthday party is more banging and less whimpering. And if we manage to sneak into any festivals with the dancing grass van this summer, Jess will be in charge of that too. Everyone here at Fruit Towers has started being nicer to her than ever before, as she'll have all of the tickets.

* incidentally, the answer is yes