Wasp stings and summer things

Summer is a cruel mistress. She promises sun, she promises brown shoulders and she sometimes even promises the odd rocket ice lolly. But often you find that all you get is a wasp sting on your backside and a touch of hayfever. Still, we're not here to put the mockers on things. We love summer as much as anyone else, especially when we get to start making our posh summer recipe again. Yes, cherries and strawberries is back for a shorter-than-usual stint, mainly because there will be a second summer recipe along in July (we couldn't make up our minds which one to choose, so we fudged it and went for both of them). So run to the shops, don't trip up (if you do, just stick some Savlon on the graze), grab our summer recipes with both hands and, for the love of summer, drink it.

We'd also like to take this chance to direct you to a tribute to one of our recently retired recipes. Someone made a kind of grave for it. Really. Have a look here.

The people in charge of the people

Running a country can be fairly tricky. You have to deal with some quite complicated sums, people chuck eggs and flour bombs at you, and sometimes you have to play the guitar at photo-calls as well. Luckily for us, we don't run the country, but last week our Richard was given a close-up look at how it all works. Some people at the Treasury (the ones who do the complicated sums) invited him to go to New York to attend a forum for entrepreneurs. He travelled over there with Gordon Brown (he likes complicated sums), Mr Branson (he likes beards) and many other movers and shakers, and when they got to America they met their equivalents and sat around a big table to work out how to encourage more people to start their own businesses. Rich says that it went very well and that the Chancellor's favourite smoothie is whichever one's on special offer.

Do you know someone who's a bit nice?

We're quite lucky in that we work in a nice place with some good people. An example of this is the time that New Adam once lent me £3.50 for my lunch. To honour the greatness of the other people who you work with, we'd like to start a slightly regular competition, where we ask you to nominate a fantastic office mate. You need to tell us exactly why they have recently been amazing - we'll read all of your stories and choose the most amazing office mate in the land, and then send them drinks and gifts and all of that stuff.

Just send your story and nomination to mylovelyofficemate@innocentdrinks.co.uk and we'll have a read and a choose.

Small things of great interest

Here is the bit at the end where we tell you that you can have a look at three gorgeous people with the Flowers of the Week right here. There's also a new job up on the site this week - Communications Manager, no less.

And for those interested, our Barney and his brother Ed are doing a talk, all about their slightly idiotic achievement of running over five marathons in six days across the Sahara Desert. There will be pictures, a chance to try their desert rations and an insight into why two handsome and sensible young men would half-kill themselves in the name of charity. Monday 7th June, 7pm at the prestigious Inner Temple Hall in London (Temple or Blackfriars tube). And it's free to get in.

Remember when you were younger, and one of the coolest things to do was go to the Radio 1 Roadshows? Well, we've recreated something very similar, apart from there aren't any DJs. Or pop stars. But there will be dancing and music. Oh yes, from today onwards, our dancing grass vans will be travelling around the UK, and if you're really lucky and ask really nicely, the nice boys and girls who are looking after them may even play some music and do the Funky Chicken for you. We'll be letting you know about where and when they'll be visiting a town near you, but in the meantime, if you see them out and about, please give them a wave, or pop on by to try a sample of one of our drinks. You might also want to remind them to call their Mums.

The C's have it

It's been a bumper week for people joining the innocent family. We have two lovely ladies, Camilla and Chloe, who have come to help out here at Fruit Towers. Not only do they share the same initial, but they both seem to like walking and running. Camilla will be looking after Richard, Adam and Jon, as well as helping within the office, and Chloe will be helping with our fruitstock festival as well as other summer events. Here are some interesting facts about both of them.

Chloë

• She has power-walked the New York Marathon in her bra, to raise money for Breast Cancer
• She used to work for an explorer
• Josh is the name of her black and white cat

Camilla

• She ran the London Marathon this year
• She would really like a Jack Russell Terrier for Christmas
• Her grandpa is called Nevill

Office mate of the month

We were very pleased with our first office Office Mate of the Month. Waterproof mascara was applied, and now all we need is an Esther Rantzen-esque presenter, and we'll be all set for our very own version of Hearts of Gold. Nominations ranged from a nice man who knew how they liked their coffee, to helping them out with invoices. But as the very title suggests, there can only be one winner. Or in this case, as the judges were tied, there are two. The first is Nicki, who buys jaffa cakes for her colleagues, and has even asked one of them to be her bridesmaid when she marries her boyfriend, all the while secretly fancying Johnny Depp. She has had a rough time of it just lately, so her office mate Kate thought she could do with cheering up. Our other joint winner is the lovely Jamie, who was voted for by Julia, Rachel and Paul. They had a whole list of reasons why he should win, including a rather impressive set of wiggly hips, he can (almost) levitate and his hamster Johnathan isn't very well at the moment.

If your office mate didn't win, or you didn't manage to get your nomination in on time, you've got a whole month to gather reasons why they should be our Office Mate of the Month, July 2004.

Talent search

Everyone has their own hidden talents. Whether it's the ability to knit dishcloths or perform a triple Lutz on ice, we've all got something to give. We're kicking off a very special talent search of our own, in association with the nice people at Arts and Business, to find some of the best new summertime music for Fruitstock, our free music festival, on the 7th and 8th of August 2004. We're searching for any unsigned artists who would like to play live in front of 20,000 people. If you'd like to find out more and how to apply, please visit www.fruitstock.com

innocent roadshow rolls on

Just a quick note to let you know our roadshow will be hitting Bath and Bristol this week. If you work in either of these places and would like some drinks dropped off especially for you and your hard-working colleagues, please e-mail your company name, full address and a contact telephone number to the lovely Jessica (jessica@innocentdrinks.co.uk).

Summer of love

Summer is a time of romance and barbecues and perhaps even some romantic barbecues. If you've got your eye on that special boy/girl then now could be your chance to impress them with your cooking prowess. What better way to wash down some sausages than with "Love's young dream," one of the cocktails from our recipe book. Here's how to make it :

You'll need 4 raspberries, 2 blackberries and half a bottle of champagne. Take two champagne glasses and place two raspberries and a blackberry in each glass. Crush them with the flat end of a bar spoon (a teaspoon will do). Slowly top up with champagne. Make sure the fruit you're using is sweet. If it's a bit on the tart side, you can always add a teaspoon of crème de mûre, (blackberry liqueur) to each glass.

We'd love to hear about any positive hand-holding/kissing results.

If you'd like to find out a bit more about our book, or indeed buy a copy, please visit http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/book.html

Three is our magic number

innocent is growing week by week, and it isn't because of all those ice creams we've been eating. Three lovely people have joined us this week, and here are some interesting facts about Harriet, Eleanor and Kevin.

• Harriet will be with us for the summer, and is going to be helping our product development team run smoothly.
• She learnt to stitch and glue wounds yesterday, and had a bit of a practice on a pig's trotter.*
• She is a quarter Isle of Man-ish.
  
• Eleanor will be developing new recipes and making sure our existing drinks are up to their usual high standards.
• She once saw Richard Whiteley in a park in Barcelona.
• She has two chickens, rabbits, fish, cats and horses, so two, it would seem, is her magic number.
  
• And last, but by no means least, is Kevin. He'll be working with the accounts team over the summer.
• His right leg is longer than his left.
• He's already going grey, so his mates call him Gandalf.

* she is learning to be physiotherapist, hence the stitching and stuff

Take me home

It's a very big day in the history of innocent. Of course, there have been other big days, like the time All Saints walked through our office, but today is a bit special, because we're launching our brand new one litre cartons. You see, we thought it was about time you could buy a litre of our smoothies, take it home, pop it into your fridge and then have a glass or two whenever you fancy. So we found some big cartons, poured our best recipes into them and then asked some shopkeepers if they wouldn't mind selling some for us. Luckily enough, they said yes, and as of today you should find our big packs in lots of branches of Sainsbury's and Waitrose, with Somerfield joining in next week.

You can read more about them here, and let us know what you reckon at hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk

Please come to our party

Obviously, what with it being a quiet day here at Fruit Towers, it seems like the perfect time to tell you all about Fruitstock, our free festival for nice people. We did it for the first time last year, and it went pretty well, with over 38,000 people turning up to enjoy the sunshine, music and posh food and drink. This year we'll be doing it in Regent's Park again, but it'll be a little bit bigger. We'll still have lots of live music (including some quite big names, fingers crossed), and we'll also have a DJ stage, lots of food and drink, a farmer's market, kids' corner, massage area and maybe even a few squirrels. Fruitstock is our chance to say thanks to everyone who buys our drinks (i.e. you), so we'd love to see you on 7th and 8th August between 12-9pm. And make sure you tell your friends - more info at www.fruitstock.com

PS if you're really bored, check out our webcam at 6.15pm on Monday 5th July to watch us practicing our drumming for Fruitstock.

In the mag

Great news from the world of Which? this week. As many of you will know, Which? is a magazine that's owned and produced by the Consumer's Association, and reviews all manner of things in the interest of making sure that people aren't being sold shoddy goods. Well, in July's issue they review smoothies and yoghurt drinks, and we got the best score (nine out of ten, for our yoghurt, boysenberries and wild blueberries recipe), which is nice. The findings were also repeated in Metro newspaper and The Herald in Scotland, making it all even nicer. Read the article and scores here.