Hello. This week's interesting fact is as follows - if you only had one hair on your body, and all of the growing power of a regular person's hair was concentrated into that single hair, that hair would grow 1.2 miles per day. Feel the force.

Summer will be along soon

Summer must be just around the corner. We can tell because it was freezing last night, there were hailstorms in Herefordshire yesterday and fake tan sales are rocketing. In addition to these traditional signs, we can also report that our seasonal smoothie for spring has almost run out. Yes, lychees and passion fruits is soon to be no more, so if you're partial to this recipe we suggest that you pop out and share some quality time together while you still can. Hats off.

Save the Earth in a day, sort of

Next Monday (5th June) is World Environment Day. In our humble estimation, it will be quite tough to solve all of the world's environmental problems in one day, but the UN are going to have a go. And we guess the least we can do is join in too. So, park your car and get your bike out. Cut back on the amount of water you use. Put the recycling bin out. Eat carrots, not rare birds' eggs. In short, do all of the stuff you know you should be doing but just sort of forget to do. Go on. It's one day. Try really hard. And see if you can rope in some friends as well.

Bits and pieces

• Congratulations to Becky and Jade, the only two people who correctly matched faces to footwear in our shoe competition the other week. Cases of drinks will be on the way to you once we've got in touch for your addresses.
• Loyal innocent drinker Fionnuala Barrett has been voted vice head-girl of St Louis High School in Dublin. Congratulations Fionnuala.
• In case you were wondering, the world record for a musician holding a single note is held by Costa Rican saxophonist Geovanny Escalante. In 1998 he held a steady 'A' for 90 minutes and 45 seconds, almost twice as long as the previous record, which was held by Kenneth 'Kenny' G.

Holiday reading

Seeing as we're all willing summer to arrive, here are some innocent ideas for things to read on holiday that aren't the menu (chicken and chips gets pretty repetitive). We asked some of the people who work here at Fruit Towers for their recommendations.

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner.
Jonathan says "I don't like reading but I really enjoyed reading this. It applies economic theory to stuff other than that boring financial rubbish. For example, it tries to explain the fall of the Ku Klux Klan, why crack dealers live with their mums and if teachers are cheaters."

The Rum Diaries by Hunter S Thompson.
Matt says "Perfectly captures that drunken, sunburnt, sandy tropical feeling."

The Blandings Short Stories by PG Wodehouse.
Ailana says "The trials and tribulations of growing the best pumpkin for the local village show made me laugh out loud on the train. Most people know Wodehouse for Jeeves and Wooster but these stories are a triumph."

A Short History Of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
Pete says "This book taught me the following - we mean very little and are lucky to be here, the atoms that make you and I are eternal and have been around for a while, and humans are gifts to nature."

The Bible by God and friends.
Steve says "It's got a bit more staying power than Dan Brown, and it's handy that you can generally get hold of a copy for free in any hotel. Summary: world created, then goes on to explain the justification for the non-summer school holidays."

Remember, you don't have to buy them all - you could just borrow them from your local library, where the librarians are as friendly as can be.

Over the sea

Perhaps we are too UK-centric sometimes. To be fair, that's probably because we live here. But our brothers and sisters in other parts of the innocent world are usually doing cooler stuff than us. In France, they're getting our drinks into Patrick Bruel's post-show party, after he has rocked the Palais des Congrès to its very foundations. According to our French experts, Patrick is the "Hugh Grant of French music". Not quite sure what that means, so here's a picture to help you decide.

Also in Europe this week - we are now stocked in Crust and Crumbs in Holland. Their website is in Dutch and has some extremely attractive pictures of sandwiches on it. According to our Dutch experts, they are the "Hugh Grant of Dutch sandwich makers". Of course.

Our patch

Back in the UK, we will now have a swift look at the supermarkets. Sainsbury's are doing one of those 'save 1/3rd on all of our big cartons' things. This even includes blackberries & blueberries in a big carton (Sainsbury's is the only place you can get this at the moment).

And then there's Tesco. If you see anyone in your local branch pedalling something that looks like an exercise bike with a blender on top of it, that'll be us. We're out and about helping Tesco shoppers get a bit fitter/healthier, and the best way we could think of doing it was by making smoothies on our bike/blender things. If you see us and you fancy a go yourself, just come over and ask nicely.

Hello new people

If innocent were a country (it's that crazy geography theme again) we would probably be India - full of mangoes, with a population that's growing at an incredible rate. This information neatly segues into a hearty hello for some new people who have joined in the last couple of weeks. Here they are admiring our infamous Flowers of the Week. From left to right we have Ceri, Matt, the flowers (mainly gerberas this week), Kate and Tansy.

Ceri - Ceri once worked in a silence retreat at a meditation centre in New Zealand and wasn't allowed to speak for an entire weekend. She has a strong aversion to the sound of polystyrene being broken up and really doesn't like leeks either.

Matt - Matt is fast gaining a reputation for formidable footwear and owns a pair of trainers so spectacular that local kids stop talking when he walks past and gaze at his shoes instead. Little do they know that for two years running, between the ages of 8 and 9, he was flower-arranging champion at his local village show. Respect.

Kate - Kate used to keep chickens and work on a farm, and knows how to milk a cow. Once she got stung by a jellyfish in Australia, which temporarily paralysed her arm, but was 'not as exciting as it sounds', apparently. A tough cookie.

Tansy - Tansy is currently making some giant brussels sprout costumes for Water Aid. That's costumes which people wear to make them look like brussels sprouts, not clothes for large vegetables. Tansy is named after a perennial herb belonging to the daisy family, and has a little sister called Lettice.

Would sir like the fish?

Last of all, we'd like to take you to Ireland, the land where you'll find a man called Matt, who runs innocent over there. He has a dilemma to share with us - he's getting married in August and doesn't know whether to go with the lamb ("perhaps the safer option, although out of season") or the turbot ("the prince of fish and in season in August, but more controversial as some people don't like fish") at his reception. He would appreciate advice - please send it to math@innocentdrinks.co.uk

Hello. This week we're going to make an appeal to the nation's musicians, offer you the chance to win some nifty clothes and maybe even get round to telling you why our Rich spent some time in a shed full of flies in Costa Rica.

Music please

It's time to polish your cornet and dust off the harpsichord, because Fruitstock, our free summer music festival, is approaching, and we're looking for an up-and-coming unsigned band to play on our big stage. Last year about 100,000 people came along to join us in Regent's Park, so this could be your biggest gig yet. If you're in a band and think that your music might be just the thing for a summer's afternoon in the park, we'd love to hear your CD. See the Fruitstock website for details of how to send it in.

Fly Away Home

Everyone likes ladybirds, except for aphids and people who suffer from a fear of insects (Entomophobia), and so we were sad to hear that our native ladybirds are under threat. Harlequin Ladybirds are an aggressive imported species which not only scoff all of our ladybirds' food, but are quite partial to eating the ladybirds themselves. A project to monitor the Harlequins has been set up and you can find out how to identify them or report sightings at www.harlequin-survey.org. Keep 'em peeled.

Suits you

Summer's definitely on the way now, and by way of celebration we've decided to resurrect an old favourite from newsletters gone by. It's the game where you get a chance to win a case of smoothies by matching some of us here at innocent to our respective footwear. All you have to do to enter is click here and play Whose Shoes?. Best of luck.

Super Fly Guy

At last, the moment you've been waiting for. Without further delay, hindrance, beating about the bush or procrastination, and as succinctly as is possible to so do, it's time to tell you what Richard was doing in a shed full of flies in Costa Rica. When Richard was visiting the foothills of the Orosi volcano, where a lot of our fruit is grown, one of the things he learned about was the farmers' commitment to sustainability and eliminating as many chemicals as possible from the farming process.

They have established a cunning method of organic pest control - breeding parasitic wasps which feed on the larvae of insects that damage their crops. They first have to breed flies as a source of food for the wasps, which happens in trays of pig feed like the one in our picture. Mmm. And as if that wasn't enough fun for one day, Richard also got to visit the shed where they keep a mountain of rotting banana skins for use as fertilizer. Some people have all the luck.

And finally

Our big cartons are going on sale in the Co-Op this week. Keep an eye out for Mangoes and Passion Fruits, Pineapples, Bananas and Coconuts and Strawberries and Bananas and check that they're settling in OK if you see them. The Co-Op is a democratically-operated retail co-operative, so we think they'll have a lovely time there.

Hello everyone. This week we are more jacket than chips. More kite than darts. More brisk walk than Sky Plus. You get the drift.

The best guest

We are pleased to announce that our pineapples, blueberries and ginger recipe is back. In fact, it's backer than Burt Bacharach singing Back In Black at the Blackpool Empire Ballroom. Really.Aside from all of that Burt claptrap, this recipe is one of the most super-nutritious recipes we've ever made. So we implore you to get your fill of this exceptional guest recipe before it scarpers again. Go on.

Mr Tickle

Last week we promised to give you another instalment of our Richard's trip to Costa Rica. He was in the foothills of the Orosi volcano, which is where we grow lots of our fruit - very fertile soil. Rich learned something that he didn't know before - all of our passion fruits are pollinated by hand. Wow. Apparently, the ever so beautiful passion flower only opens for a couple of hours every day, so our farmers stop tending to their main crop (oranges) and give their passion flowers a bit of a tickle. The result - some massive yellow passion fruits (much juicier than those wrinkly purple ones).

Next week - we tell you why Richard was in a shed with some flies, which to be honest we were going to tell you about this week but we thought the passion fruit fruit stuff was better.

Forza Costa

Coffee - breath freshener of choice for millions of secondary school teachers across the nation and mildly addictive legal stimulant. We love it. Especially when it's from Costa Coffee. Can you sense the bit that comes next? Where we say our drinks are now available at all branches of Costa Coffee? You can? You perceptive so and so.

Up front

Well well well. If you go to the main Food and Drink page at www.ocado.com you can see a nice picture of our smoothies for kids, which can be clicked if you would like to read some rewarding facts about said drinks. Such prominence.

And finally...

We would like to end this week's news in France. We've been selling our drinks there for a while and are very very happy to announce that we're now stocking in branches of Monop', which, according to our innocent people in France, is a bit like Tesco Metro. Except this being France, each store is painted bright pink. And you can even make their website turn pink if you click the little pink button in the top left corner. How exciting.

Eating fruit adds years to your life. That's what it says on the BBC website, next to a picture of Tony Blair on a rowing machine.

Supernanasgoholistic

Our Richard has just got back from Costa Rica to visit our friends at the Rainforest Alliance. They're a lovely bunch. In fact, they're so nice that we've decided to buy all of our bananas from them. In case you didn't know, the Rainforest Alliance is an independent, non-commercial entity that audits farms and fruit plantations in a holistic fashion. It looks at things as a whole, employing natural techniques to replace agrochemicals, ensuring price and wage premiums and better social conditions for workers, and perhaps most importantly, making sure that all of this helps to protect the biodiversity of the land in which we grow our fruit.

We're starting off with bananas, and as soon as other fruits become available in the quantities that we need, we'll buy a whole lot more from those crazy Rainforest people.

And there will be more about Rich's trip next week, including the bit where he hung out in a shed with some flies.

Alpha mail

We got 10 out of 10 in the Daily Mail on Tuesday. They said all sorts of nice things about our smoothies, as well as giving away The Colditz Story on DVD and having a picture of Anne Robinson on the front page.

Birthday quake

As the headline above might suggest, our polite request for people to send us birthday cakes (we were seven last Friday) did not go unheeded. A steady trickle of egg'n'flour based treats turned into a mighty torrent, and we were almost wiped out by the amount of sponge, chocolate and cookie-based morsels that littered the office last week. In our eyes, all of the cake-bakers are winners (and bakers) but we thought we would tell you which one we liked best. And the winner is Tansy, who baked this phenomenal thing (see picture) and will be rewarded with some fabulous posh baking gear, some smoothies, our new book and some childish begging for another cake. Please. You can see some of our favourite cakes here.

And finally...

• Some friends of ours have just started making nice little meals for 1-5 year olds. They're called Little Dish and you can get them from selected Waitrose stores (in the fresh meals aisle) and online at Ocado. We've had a taste and we heartily approve, although we are aware that we're not the target market.
• Meera's mum brought every in the office a tongue scraper back from her recent visit to India.
• Did you know that the amount of bananas we use every year is equivalent to the weight of 1,050,000 badgers? Something to think about.

You write the news

We figured that it might be quite a nice idea to have a bit in our news that's actually your news - you send us in things that have happened to you, or maybe some advance warning of your village fete, and then we can spread the word to like-minded innocent people.

There is one proviso - we maintain the right to not shamelessly plug other people's products or pass on any news that could be deemed a) a bit rude or b) a bit boring. But we reckon that it might just work. Just send your news to mynewsis@innocentdrinks.co.uk And we'll reward anything that we use with a big fat case of drinks and a knowing smile. Thanks.