Fruitstock happened a while ago, but it still feels like only yesterday in our hearts. This may have something to with the fact that we've only just got round to sticking the video of the happy day up on the site. It looks real pretty and it's definitely worth a viewing. Just go to the front page and click the link. Some other good news about Fruitstock (or at least the 2003 version) is that it won the following prizes for being such a nice weekend:

 - Silver for best outdoor event
 - Gold for best brand experience
 - Grand Prix for best live event

Click here to see a nice picture of everyone having a gay old time at the awards do.

Sssshhhh...

Have we talked about our library much yet? Things get so busy round here that we often forget what we have and haven't said, so we're just going to make sure. You see, we've got a library on our website. And you can borrow books from it. You just go to the library and follow the instructions. You'll find a whole list of books that we like and if you want to read one of them you can - just let us know and we'll send it out to you. Likewise, we'd like to know what books you reckon we should put into our library, seeing as there are more of you than there are of us, and you've probably read more books than us too. Email iloveagoodbookme@innocentdrinks.co.uk with your recommendations.

Learn Irish with Kevin

You may remember that last week we learned some Irish phrases with Matt. This week Kevin (who is our very own bona fide Irishman) takes the reins and takes us on a ride through his country's native tongue, stopping along the way for a pint of the dark stuff at a country pub. Probably. Anyway, here are this week's key phrases.

Nil aon smoothie coimh maith le innocent smoothie - There' s no smoothie quite like an innocent smoothie.

Am bhuil aon seans agam chur a rugaidh an innocent smoothie le uisce baithe? - Any chance of grabbing an alcoholic smoothie?

Nior raimh aon Innocent smoothies sa siopa? Pog mo thoin. - No innocent smoothies in the shop? Kiss my bum.

Two lone swordsmen

We are big fans of weddings. The dresses, the dancing, the cake and the drunken aunt who shames herself with the groom's best mate from work - they all bring a tear to our eye. We recently had two weddings that affected the lives of innocent people - the one where Camilla married Westie and the one where Richard married Melinda and became Mr Page. To celebrate this fact, we'd like to show you a picture of Camilla and Westie cutting their cake with a massive sword, and we'd like to apologise for the lack of a picture from the Page wedding. No explanation has been forthcoming, although we do hear that the photographer was a big fan of the free cocktails served before dinner.

Way gnarly

Have any of you ever been to Xscape? It's a place where you can ski or snowboard indoors on real snow, and there's one in Milton Keynes and one in Castleford. A couple of innocent people have been and had a go before, and have given Xscape a glowing report, which is just as well as they've started to sell our drinks there. So if you are missing the snow or just fancy getting a bit more use out of those £300 snowboarding trousers that you only wear once a year, please go to Xscape and pull some rad airs (or something).

Erm, hello

As you may have noticed, we like to say hello. This week we are saying hello to some places that sell our drinks. So it's hello to the people at Mise-en-place in Battersea, who have been selling innocent beverages since William the Conqueror said "Bonjour Angleterre". And it's hallo to Beanscene, who have 7 shops in Scotland, love their music and are selling lots of our drinks. We'd also like to say hullo to Café Retro in Bath, a tiny place that sells tons of smoothies and has been doing so for many years And we reserve our final hello/hallo/hullo for Bloomberg, provider of up-to-the-minute financial news and record-breaking innocent stockist. Hello.

Win win win lose

Only joking. There are no losers in the innocent news, apart from the people who didn't win the office mate competition last week. For your information, the winners were Maria, who terrorises the living daylights out of every man around (this isn't why she won), and Joel, who has curly hair and looks like the man who runs the comic book store in The Simpsons. Drinks and sundry other items will be sent to them really soon.

A question

You know how we like to ask you questions? And you know how quite a lot of you answer, tempted by the fact that we'll give some drinks to people who give us the best answers? Well, here we go & if you were going to choose a seasonal smoothie recipe for spring, what would it be? What fruit (or other ingredients) would you use? Answers in an email to icanseethefuture@innocentdrinks.co.uk - the 3 best answers will receive a box of fun/drinks.

Learn Irish the easy way

We at innocent are not just a bunch of people who make little tasty drinks. No, we pride ourselves on adding something a little extra to your lives as well, a bit like that building society. So here is something for all people who are planning on going to Ireland in the near future. We've asked our men in Dublin (Matt and Pete) to give us some Irish phrases that might come in useful when you're next over there visiting your Gran or attending an industry forum.

Week one - learn to say the following:

'An innocent smoothie please' = 'innocent smoothie le do thoil' (pron: innocent smoothie le duh hull)

There you go. Please make sure you do your homework and we'll see you next week.

Check the pilot light

The heating got turned on for the first time in a while last night, and everyone was huddled like penguins on the train station platform this morning, avoiding the rain. Yes, autumn is here and life is slowing down a bit after the amazing summer* that we've just experienced.

To celebrate the return of one of our favourite seasons (we also like winter, summer and spring) we have brought back our blackcurrants and gooseberries recipe for a record-breaking third time. Whenever we take this recipe off the shelves at the end of autumn, we get lots of calls and emails from people who want us to mess with the seasons and make it autumn all year long. But we can't - we just don't have the power to alter time and nature and all of that stuff, so you'll just have to grab it in the next three months or so. We hope you enjoy it.

Deals on meals

Boots - pointy footwear with heels that girls wear when it gets a bit nippy or a large high street shop that sells lipstick, plasters and fancy sandwiches? Well, we reckon both answers are right, although in this case we're going to concentrate on the latter.

You see, as of today you can buy our drinks as part of a very nice meal deal in hundreds of branches of Boots all over the UK. You get a sandwich, a snack and an innocent drink for £3.29 if you're in the south, or an even better £2.99 in the north. We're not sure where the north begins and the south ends - if you find out, please let us know and we'll decide whether it's worth jumping in the car and nipping up the A1 for our lunch.

Do you have a friend?

We've done the innocent Office Mate of the Month a couple of times before and received loads of wonderful entries. For those of you not familiar with the drill, all you have to do is send us an email telling us why one of your colleagues is the best person you could ever hope to work with. We'll read all of the stories, laugh, cry, blow our noses and then choose the winner, who will receive an assortment of fine smoothies (innocent ones) and some Haribo Star Mix if they're lucky.

There is one proviso - we'd ask you to stick to stories of good cheer, laughter and sunshine, mainly because Rowena has to read them all and she gets upset when they get a bit heavy, if you know what we mean. Email hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk with your tales of office bonding.

Things that go on behind the scenes #1

You might think it's all bananas and fresh lime juice here at Fruit Towers, but behind the fruit there are some truly amazing business decisions being made that keep everything ticking over. For instance, this morning we learned that our accounting system was overhauled last week in a move that has since become known as the Great Decimal Point Change.

There are only a few people who understand what it means to the business (something about us not having to bill people for 0.0005p) but apparently there is a bit in Superman 3 that explains it all, where Richard Pryor swindles the bank out of loads of money and buys a Ferrari. Well, at least that's where James (our Finance Director) told us he got the idea from.

And finally…

Some pictures from Surfstock for you all to see. Our Adahl and Kat went down there (Perrenporth) to show off our drinks and ogle surfers.

And now for the familiar call to all who fancy working at innocent - there are tons of jobs up on the jobs page if you'd like to have a look.

Hard graft

We have had to pull ourselves together and do some work in the last couple of weeks as it's getting quite busy. Part of the reason is that lots of Tesco Express stores are about to start selling our drinks, which means that we needed to round up a few more crates of mangoes than usual.

There's also something called Back To Food going on in all branches of Selfridges, where nice innocent people will be blending up our smoothies on the spot and having a chat with anyone who stops to say hello.

Expand your mind

And then there's all of those students. Yes, the Trisha-loving future of the nation all go back to university in the next couple of weeks, so we've been filling the fridges in seats of learning across the nation, in the vain hope that some young folks will choose a smoothie rather than 3-for-a-pound shots of Aftershock. We aren't holding out much hope to be honest.

Actually, come to think of it, maybe we can at least have a go. This is a message to all students across the land - if you'd like your university or college to stock our drinks, please let us know, and let us know which bit of the uni/college you reckon we should be stocked in (canteen, bar, student shop, your room). And if you let us know which uni/college your studying at, that would be helpful too - iveonlygotfourhoursaweek
@innocentdrinks.co.uk is the address to use.

Electric blanket

We all love a picnic, especially our Irish brothers Pete and Matt, who have been known to lie on a blanket and eat pickled onion soufflé in their local park from time to time. So it was no surprise that they found themselves at the Electric Picnic in Stradbally last weekend, selling some drinks, wearing some lovebeads and appreciating the sounds provided by Grandmaster Flash and Super Furry Animals amongst others.

Matt and Pete have given this festival their special innocent seal of approval, so please get your tickets in for 2005 nice and early.

Got a light?

Martin is from South Africa and knows a lot about computers, which is quite useful because he's in charge of our IT stuff. He's also just given up smoking after 15 years. He told us that he started whilst doing his National Service when he was 18, and hasn't stopped since. But the time has come, and he seems to be doing it without the aid of gum or tons of coffee or anything*.

If you've ever smoked you'll know that giving up is a long and lonely road, but with your help we can make that road a better place to be, and it might even have some service stations that have no-smoking areas on it. So send your messages of support to Martin at itswhenihaveadrinkthatireallyfancyone
@innocentdrinks.co.uk and together we'll make him stronger.

PS…

Marie-Claire J, Charlie B, Daniel H won the 'Whose Shoes?' competition last week. For those of you who got stuck, the answers were...

Geoff - 1
Louise - 2
Emma - 3
Emilia - 4
Martin - 5
Kat - 6

Jobs for life

And there are still a billion new jobs up at http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/jobs - worth a look if you're a bit bored doing whatever you're doing.