Random patterns

Chaos is good. It's how the universe started, so you've sort of got to be a fan or else you'd still be waiting to be invented. Anyway, chaos is coursing through our veins today as we've just made Fruit Towers a bit bigger and most of our stuff is in boxes. You see, a few months ago we got hold of the building next door and started to do it up, and today is our first day sitting at our new desks. It's a bit strange but we're getting used to it. While we're on about the new bit of Fruit Towers we'd just like to doff our caps to Ian and Scott, the men who have done all of the hard graft. We pay tribute to them right here.

The Newbians

The fact that we've got a bit more space means that we've got room for the new people who started working here today:

Charlotte - Charlotte is our new Communications Manager, and already today she's fixed the phones and popped a couple of carrier pigeons into her filing cabinet. Apparently she tells us that being Communications Manager doesn't really mean that she should be fixing the phones, but we wouldn't know as we've never had a Communications Manager before.

Fiona - Fiona is here to do a year-long placement in our Trade Marketing department. She's pretty chirpy, but she's not a blackbird - she's a woman, and she's going to be helping Jess, Daisy, Simon and Michelle look after all of our customers and make sure that we look presentable in the shops. Bless her.

Knits so you

If we've got our demographic analysis right, you are an attractive woman aged between 16-30 who likes shopping at Topshop and knitting. Apologies to any unattractive old men who might be reading (sorry Dad), but who knows, you might be interested in this as well. This Thursday 28 October between 4-8pm we will be in Topshop on Oxford Circus having a knit-in, where we'll be encouraging people to knit hats for our Supergran project. We'll be with the nice people from R2, a knitting 'collective' who will be teaching the basics of knitting (buy a sheep, shave off the wool, etc) and will be dishing out goodie bags as well. Should be some free smoothies knocking about if you're lucky. See you there.

Office mate

And finally, it's that time of the month again. We'd like you to nominate your Office Mate of the Month. All you have to do is email us a short description of why someone you work with deserves to have a lot of drinks and books and stuff sent to them. It's usually because they've been nice to you, bought you some fig rolls or even agreed to marry your ugly brother who to be quite frank was never going to leave home otherwise. All entries should go to officemate@innocentdrinks.co.uk by the end of Friday 29 October, and please, don't get too heavy or send any really sad stories as Rowena (who does the judging) is fragile enough as it is.

Men Without Hats

This story has nothing to do with Men Without Hats, a great pop group who operated in the 1980s. But if you've never heard their epic Safety Dance song, we recommend downloading it soon (in a legal fashion, of course). Anyway, we want to talk about woolly hats. You might have heard about our Supergran project, where we're sticking lots of little woolly hats on our bottles and donating proceeds from the sales towards keeping elderly people warm this winter. Well, we thought you might want to look at our Knitting Club, who gather every Thursday to make small bobble hats and gossip about Hollyoaks. And we also wanted to tell you about a lovely woman called Sandy, who has organised a Knitting Club at her office in Winchester. Pictures of all of this stuff are available here

You've either got it or you haven't

Style is pretty subjective. Some people think they look good in ponchos and other people wonder what the big fuss is about an old blanket with a hole in it. Anyway, the Sunday Times Style magazine deals with these issues every week, which kind of makes you wonder why they decided to write an article about us lot at the weekend. Not that we're complaining - the Sunday Times is the doorstop of choice in millions of homes across the UK, so we figured that if a lot of people read about us, they might then buy our drinks at some point in the future. This is the sort of stunning business insight that has got us to where we are today (Shepherds Bush in case you didn't know). The one thing that did worry us was the fact that the article mentions that Richard wears leather thongs. But like we said, you've either got it or you haven't.

Hello

It seems like a while since we said hello. So hello. And hello to some new people who have started working here at Fruit Towers:

Conor - Conor's quite tall and has got red trainers. He's going to be managing all of our vehicles and the all-important big fridge, into which we walk and take drinks out of.

Andrea - this remarkable woman has been here for a while but has only just become a permanent member of the family. Her main job is taking our computers apart and then putting them together again. She's real good at this.

Polly - Polly's a bit shorter than Conor and has blonde hair. She's going to be helping Ailana do our PR.
Bronwyn - Bronwyn is Bronte's right hand woman. So if you're applying for a job at Fruit Towers it pays to be nice to her.

Your news

Finally, a little bit of your news:

At the bus-stop last week while on the way to my (lovely) girlfriend's house, a Chinese man, whom I had seen before with a similar quantity, proceeded to eat 12 big tomatoes. Each took him only two bites.

From Phil C in Leeds

I'm basically writing to share my news that I got an A* on my science Part GCSE (it's complicated), An A on my RS Coursework (if not an A* since that was my first draft) and also an A on a Maths test (my first ever A in Maths!!!! I'm so pleased for myself!!) 4th) I am in love and although you might say I'm young i don't really care because you probably won't put this in your newsletter anyway. (Young Love, ain't it grand?) Plus a fair few of my friends are also loved up! ROMANCE LIVES!!!

From Rachael H

PS

Quite a lot of people entered last week's competition that asked you the name of Martine McCutcheon's band before she became famous as someone in Eastenders. The correct answer was Milan and the people who won are called Jennifer F, Dan D and Sophie M. Well done.

At the bottom of the deep blue sea

You know how you all like fishes? And you're always looking for a place where you can look at the fishes and maybe some anemones and a seahorse if you're lucky, all the while enjoying a refreshing innocent drink? Well, search no longer, because we've found the place you're looking for. It's called the National Marine Aquarium and it's in Plymouth. Bit of a pain if you live in Dundee but quite good if you live in Exeter. Anyway, you can read more about it here and please don't feed the sharks as they get a bit frisky after they've had a bit of your Kit Kat.

Ireland - land of mystery

Actually, Ireland isn't a land of mystery. Rather, it seems to be a land where a fair few people drink our drinks, a fact that's helped by recent developments in Tesco stores, where you can now buy our big fat cartons to take home with you . We also have
some new bits of the Irish language for you to learn and practise this week, as supplied by a very nice person called Ruth who drinks our drinks:

"Do you come here often? Fancy an innocent smoothie?"

- An tagann tu anseo go minic? An bhfhuil noisean agat ar innocent smoothie?

"Your hair is gorgeous and shiny - you must drink buckets of innocent smoothies."

- Gruaige lonrai agus alain ata agats - caithfidh tu ag ol galune na innocent smoothies.

Your news

A couple of weeks ago we asked you to send us your news in the hope that i) it would make us smile a bit, and ii) it would make our lives a bit easier every Monday when we're writing this stuff. Wonder of wonders, you answered in your droves, and it is with great pleasure that we present a bit more of your news:

My news is that my lovely husband Danny is trying to set up a wolf education centre*, where we fully intend to sell innocent drinks, if that’s OK with you. We haven’t actually set it up yet, as we’re still looking for land and funding and stuff (don’t worry, I’m not on the scrounge for money, just a drink!!), but when we do, we will ring you up about having smoothies in our shop. And water and juice and anything else lovely you’ve made by then. Although I can’t promise all of them will get to the shop.

From Hazel W

Something most bizarre happened to me this week. I was making cakes with my 4 year old daughter, Jessica, and went to my kitchen cupboard to get a cup to make the icing in. I chose a nice blue spotty cup from the back of the cupboard that hadn't been used in a while. When i took it out and looked inside it i was most alarmed to find a dead bat in the bottom. It had somehow gotten through a hole in the wall of the cupboard i think. I had to go and sit down for quite some time to recover - I mean, nobody likes to
find a dead body in their own home, do they? Also, how distressing for the poor little bat, to end its life in a teacup. As Jessica put it "It just makes our hearts feel sad".

From Emma S

Time for a competition

We realise that it's a while since we gave you the chance to win a load of stuff. So it's time to correct this oversight and offer you untold riches.
In our search for suitable prizes we had a look at a lot of stuff that we found here at Fruit Towers, such as the picture of the skateboarding girl on my desk and Geoff's collection of psychedelic wool. But we then thought that what you might like to win most would be a case of drinks, a recipe book and our other little book (the one that's called Stay Healthy, Be Lazy and is perfect for people who are rubbish at looking after their bodies and their diet and everything else). The value of this prize is beyond belief i.e. it's about £40, so it's going to take a really hard question to sort out the winners from the losers. Here goes.

This weekend our Mark found himself dancing with Martine McCutcheon in an unnamed disco bar in west London. Unfortunately he can't remember what song the DJ was playing, but it wasn't one of Martine's. Anyway, to win one of three sets of amazing innocent stuff, can you tell us the name of the slightly rubbish girl band that Martine was in before she was on Eastenders?

Was it

a. Rome
b. Milan
c. Stow on the Wold

Please email your answers to milan@innocentdrinks.co.uk by the end of Friday 15 October. Thanks.

* if anyone fancies letting us know what happens at a wolf education centre (spelling tests? times tables?) we're all ears...

And on tonight's show...

Special guests are good. I mean, who can forget that episode of The A-Team when Boy George made an appearance? It was brilliant.

Inspired by this amazing memory (the episode was called 'Cowboy George' in case you want to check out the DVD) we decided to get our own special guest. So we've done it. We've got a new guest thickie recipe, made from plump figs, sweet sweet honey and some bio yoghurt that will do your guts the world of good. The idea with this guest recipe is that it will change every few months, according to what decent ingredients we can get our hands on. It also gives us the chance to try out a few ideas that we've been playing around with in the kitchen. So please look out for it and if you think you've got a recipe that we should be making, you are most welcome to let us know at bemyguest@innocentdrinks.co.uk or click here to see our current one.

Make hats not war

You might have noticed that the nights are getting longer and the leaves are getting browner and all of that stuff. So we think that it's time to start thinking about sensible mittens and woolly hats. Especially woolly hats. Last year we knitted a load of woolly hats for our drinks to wear as part of our Supergran project . And we're going to do it again this year.

It works like this - for every behatted bottle sold throughout branches of EAT this December, innocent and EAT will donate 50p to our charities ExtraCare and Age Concern. This money will go towards keeping elderly people warm this winter, which is marvellous. Of course, we can't actually knit all of the hats ourselves, which is where you come in. In order to be able to hit our donation target of ten thousand pounds, we need to knit lots and lots of hats. Don't worry, we've already recruited lots of lovely people across the land to help out, but your aid would be appreciated as well. You can check out the knitting pattern by clicking here, and by knitting a few hats you can get that nice warm feeling that comes from doing someone a favour. So get your needles out and get cracking.

Time to get ill

People get poorly. It's a fact of life. One day you're walking around feeling fine, the next day you're lying in bed with a temperature of 103F and a hot water bottle shoved up your kilt. Here at innocent we get ill just like everyone else. We get colds, we get flu and we even get viruses that are spread by intra-office kissing. But there is one man who has stood aloof from all of this germ-related nonsense. And that's our Jon. Jon has never ever had a sick day in the five and a half year history of innocent. Nor did he have any sick days in his old job. So imagine our surprise when there was no Jon in his swivel chair this morning. We thought he must have locked himself in the toilet or perhaps got lost on the way to work, but we were very very wrong. The truth is that Jon is currently at home with an unspecified malady, probably still beavering away on his brand new paper-thin laptop and watching us via the network of secret spy cameras he has (probably) installed here at Fruit Towers. We hope you can join us in wishing him a speedy recovery.

Your news

Last week we asked you for your news. We got quite a lot so we are going to do our favourites one at a time. Here's part one:

Hello. My news this week has been;

- got a new job, which I start in a few weeks time (I suspect this may fall into the boring category tho)
- I found a ferret in the street on my way home from work t'other night, who was eating some chips! Had to flag down a nice young gentleman in his van who then took the slippery creature to the PDSA (we think it may have escaped from someone's house)... it was a lot of excitement, I can tell you!

From Anna C

(if you want to send us your news and win some drinks, email your stuff to mynewsis@innocentdrinks.co.uk)

The small but very important bit at the end

First up this week, we kind of need your help. We're looking for kids aged between 7-12 and their parents to come into Fruit Towers (Shepherds Bush) next Tuesday or Thursday (12th or 14th October) between 5-6pm to taste our new kids recipes and to offer opinions on how we should/shouldn't go about making drinks for young people. In return for your help you'll get lots of free smoothies and something in a brown envelope that you can spend on sweets i.e. cash.

Email lovelyemma@innocentdrinks.co.uk if you'd like to help or find out more.

And finally we want to show you our new cow van designs. We have been getting bored of the same old Friesian patterning, and wanted to do something that was a bit more street, a bit more urbangrittyreal. Please click here to witness the freshness (and Christian Slater)