Expand your mind

Books. Source of all wisdom, treasury of man's history on this planet and useful tool for showing other people just how clever you are. We love books, which has led us to have a pop at writing a couple of them, and we're particularly proud of 'Stay Healthy. Be Lazy", which is our new one. It's all about staying healthy without making too much effort, and is full of ideas for incorporating healthy food and exercise into your life in such a way that you won't even notice you're doing it. You can have a look at it here, and you can also check out our recipe book here. The latter has been reduced to £5.99 at amazon.co.uk, so it would seem that now is the time to purchase a copy.

Come and join the future

2004. Definitely one of those years that you used to read about when you were little; one of those years that was going to be full of technological advances and the future...

"In the year 2004 people will all have silver robot hair. They'll fly around in hovercrafts and will communicate with the aid of a small telepath-disk, located underneath the tongue. People will take weekend breaks on the moon, dine on freeze-dried Chateaubriand whilst staying at the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza Tranquility Base and engage in low gravity mind-golf, the sport of the future that you can play from the comfort of your armchair."

Anyway, we're still here in Shepherds Bush, watching some old red buses rattle up and down the road, about to eat a cheese sandwich (no crisps today, it being New Year and all). And we'd just like to take this opportunity to say Happy New Year, sorry the future isn't quite here yet, and we hope 2004 turns out to be a wonderful year for you and yours.

New man Dan

It's around this time of year that we like to start employing someone called Dan. We did it last January and it seemed to work quite well - Dan S is still here enjoying himself and he doesn't seem to have upset too many people with his bad jokes. So it's about time for another Dan. Dan F is here doing a 6 month placement as part of his Food and Consumer Studies degree, and a very pleasant young man he seems to be as well. His big secret is that he was all set to be the future of English football until he got a nasty ankle injury when he was 16. But now he is content with being the future of British smoothie-making, something that we are very grateful for.

Love in a warm climate

"Marriage may often be a stormy lake, but celibacy is almost always a muddy horsepond." (Thomas Love Peacock, 1817)

Polish your best shoes, phone the florist's and go and buy a hat that you'll only wear once, because there's going to be a wedding. Yes, Richard Reed, innocent founder and starring actor in such productions as The Bin Fire That Wouldn't Go Out *, proposed to long-time sweetheart Melinda on Christmas Eve whilst on holiday in India, and will trot off down the aisle with her at some point in the future. We don't know exactly where and when, but we reckon it'll be a good do and there might even be a finger buffet.

New boy

It's only right that new stuff should happen in the New Year. Last week we presented you with our New Dan, and this week we'd like to proffer another new person. David is a nice American man, and is in the middle of doing his MBA. So what better way to gain valuable business experience than to come to Fruit Towers and drive around in a Cow Van for a while? David is going to be helping out with our 2004 sales strategy, which at the moment is shrouded in secrecy, but is thought to consist of plans to sell a few more drinks than last year.

Catless in a cat-filled world

As the old rhyme goes...

"There wanst was two cats of Kilkenny
Each cat thought there was one cat too many
So they fought and they fit
And they scratched and they bit
'Til instead of two cats there weren't any."

We are sad that there are no cats left in Kilkenny, but our sadness is outweighed by the pleasure of knowing that our drinks are now available in Kilkenny after a year-long absence. They're on sale in both Dunnes Stores and in The Good Earth, run by relaxed Mike and lovely Anne.

For anyone who's interested, the origin of the rhyme about the cats seems to have been the two 'tribes' of cats that lived in Kilkenny in medieval times, one tribe in Irishtown and the other 'foreign' tribe in the walled Englishtown, who would fight each other at every opportunity. More info at http://www.kilkenny.ie

The short bit at the end

First of all, Brontë would like to say thank you to Simon, who sent us some nice chocolate this week, and who in the past has sent us some things to do with Elvis. And we'd like to take this opportunity to show you a picture of our Flowers Of The Week ™. This week shot re-enacts Richard's wedding proposal, with Richard as Richard and Brett playing the part of his big sister Melinda. Click here to feel the love.

* relive this classic here - 4th story down, under 6th March

Ouch

Will is wearing coral coloured socks today.

Here in my car

Barring the odd tractor or milk float getting in the way, roads are usually the quickest way to get to where you want to be (unless that place is Santiago and you are in Grimsby). And seeing as lots of us spend half of our lives in our cars, chewing gum and listening to p-p-pop music, we thought that it was great when we started selling our drinks in Welcome Break and Road Chef service stations. But for 2004, there is even better news. Yes, you can now buy our super smoothies in the aforementioned pitstops, meaning that you can grab a detox in a bottle at the same time as buying a tin of those travel sweets that lacerate the roof of your mouth.

Another place where our drinks go on sale this week is the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. If you work there, can you let us know what goes on there - it all sounds quite exciting. Click here to email us.

Win stuff

Hello to Sarah H, Paula K and Anthony L. Not only do you all have single letter surnames, but you also won our recent competition to tell us your favourite number. Of course, there were no right answers, but people who chose 4, 7 or combinations of the two (e.g. 4,774,744) did quite well.

For your chance to win this week's competition, just answer the following question. Are cats generally selfish and, in some cases, outright conniving?

Stick either YES or NO in the subject box of your email, and send it to petsoftenmakeyourhousesmell@innocentdrinks.co.uk. The winners get a case of our drinks, with the first out the hat also getting a Cat Calendar 2004, kindly donated to us by The Mayhew Animal Home.

Flowers of the week

As requested by somebody who regularly reads this news, this week's flowers are modelled by David, our new American person, and by innocent's very own Daisy Brook, a flower whose petals will never drop. Click here to witness the flowers, and also to see two people having a plank-off.

She's here

It's the start of another week. A week in which anything could happen. Our soothsaying skills are something that we tend to keep under our hat, but we can confidently predict that our week will involve crushing up a lot of fruit, sticking it into bottles and getting it to the shops. We also foresee sitting down for an hour at lunchtime to eat soup. Don't ask how we know such things - it's just a gift we have.

Another vision we have had is that Gemma is going to have a nice time working at innocent. She started today, and is in charge of maintaining healthy relations with the bigger shops that sell our drinks. Some things about Gemma that you probably didn't know:

• her real name is Germaine
• today was the first day for over six years that she's walked to work
• Gemma/Germaine once served ham, egg and chips to John Craven for lunch (this happened in Market Deeping whilst Mr Craven was filming a documentary about bats)

What a beauty

It's Australia Day, a time for our Antipodean cousins to finally drown their sorrows after that rugby match. Among those who will be enjoying a schooner of something down at the Walkabout in Shepherds Bush are our very own Katie, Travis and Adahl, all proud to be young Australians. Click here to see them having a bonzer time.

Of course, to get to Australia, it's usually reckoned that flying is a bit better than walking or swimming. Which leads us in a traditionally tenuous fashion to the next item on this week's agenda. This week is the last week that you can get free smoothies in the Virgin Upper Class Lounge at Heathrow, so if you are lucky enough to be flying to Australia (or anywhere else) this week, please make the most of it.

Dog gone

Last week you may recall that went on about cats a bit. Of course, there are those who took our cat chat to be slightly derogatory, so we have prepared a suitable apology to all those who got in touch on the subject: "We're sorry, we didn't mean to be rude about cats, even if they are slightly sly and would no doubt get involved in pickpocketing and other lightfingered crimes if they had hands." Anyway, Anna H won the competition about cats. Well done Anna.

This week, our focus shifts to dogs. Please click here to see if you can help Reggie get home. He looks quite small, so he might be hiding in your bread bin. Go check now.