the innocent village fete, it's so this week

This is the week to go to the innocent village fete. So say Grazia magazine.

Keep up with the in crowd and get your tickets if you haven't already. If you have then start planning your outfit. Straw hats and chequered shirts are in. Evening dress, high heels and three piece suits are probably out. Having said that, the London Swing Dance Society lot will probably be pretty well dressed.

It's going to be so last week next week. Literally.

helping out after the floods, part 2

Some more pictures of our drinks being distributed in Gloucester after the recent floods, sent to us by a nice man called Derek.

giving them away

Hello to the folks in Newby (Scarborough) who we sent some drinks to recently. We said we'd post your pictures here, so we have.

We met these Yorkshire folk via some work we've been doing with School Friend, the largest charitable provider of childcare in the UK. Over 75% of their clubs are run in deprived areas and they're trying to improve the diet of the children in these areas by offering them a healthy eating programme. Hopefully our kids smoothies are helping a bit.

helping out after the floods

Elin's local pub, last week

A word from our Elin on something that we did to help out in the aftermath of the floods:

"I live in Gloucestershire and was affected by the floods last week, so I was quite keen to help out. Last Thursday we sent 75,000 kids smoothies to the Red Cross depot in Bristol where the smoothies will be put into food packs and distributed to families/children in the flooded areas."

You can read more and see a pic in this newspaper article.

older and wiser

Imagine if you were an ancient tree… You’d have seen an awful lot in your time. In particular in the arena of men’s fashion: men in leather jerkins, men in velvet puffy pantaloons, and most recently men in tracksuits that rustle as they walk. And perhaps seeing all that might make you think the first lot, who had no time for passing sartorial whims, had it right.

If you have time this weekend then head down to the woods to pay your respect to the wise old trees. And if a tree is so old that three people can barely hug it, tell the Woodlands Trust. They’re trying to log all the best and most ancient trees in the land.  And good luck to them we say.

here’s a picture of some of us trying to check how old a tree is

making bunting

We made bunting yesterday. Using old curtains, socks, glue, ribbon, potatoes, scissors, staples, glitter and some pictures of D Hasselhoff, we created loads of the stuff, in aid of our record attempt.

First, we got some instructions (feel free to use them yourself).

Then we started using all of the weapons in our bunting-making arsenal, including a potato and a Stanley knife. So tough.

Helen soldiered on through the pain.

Will and Abi got stapling.

Sally and Mel posed for the camera.

Hoffelhass reared his head.

And by the end of the afternoon, Fruit Towers was full of bunting.

seth lakeman at the fete

We've finally finally finished the music line up for our village fete. The last bit of the jigsaw is the excellent Seth Lakeman. Seth went down a storm at Glastonbury this year, and we reckon he'll be doing the business for us too.

Tickets for the fete are available here - see you in the park on 4th and 5th August.

a pinboard update

I've just done a quick update to our pinboard after a busy couple of week's. Sorry to all those of you who had been eagerly waiting to see your handiwork up in its rightful place. This time round we have sunbathing smoothies, ice lolly smoothies, smoothies in the undergrowth and happy first time smoothie drinkers. Have a look at all these and more right here.

10 days to go...

All things fete are hottin' up over here at the minute with just 10 days to go until the big weekend. We've got a company wide lunch hour of bunting making tomorrow to help towards our longest bunting in the world attempt. We'll post an update on how it went tomorrow.

The keen eyed amongst you may have also noticed we've got some big posters dotted around London tube stations at the minute as well. Here's one I spotted at Goldhawk Road station this morning (the nearest tube stop to fruit towers). It serves as a nice little reminder of what's to come for us on our way to work each day.

the penultimate fete

While we're not going to win the prize for biggest fete, Tansy and I (Cass) both agree that this little gathering, round the corner from Fruit Towers, has all the heart.

Arlett & our Karen bonded over a smoothie (who needs a bottle of Bollinger to get the conversation flowing?) and we soon discovered that Arlett is one of the ladies that helped us keep our bottles warm in winter with the woolly hats she's knitted.  Thank you Arlett.

Karen & I played the 'name the rabbit game' (delightfully as simple as it sounds) and Tansy tried her luck at the tombola, but sadly none of us walked away with a prize.  Instead we decided to treat ourselves to the £1 book stall and we're now all proud owners of some classics.

We set up outside to begin with, with our ball in the bucket game, but only managed to get one eager participant before it rained.  He insisted on playing by his own rules and got the balls everywhere but in the bucket - but with a face like this we couldn't resist his charms and he won a smoothie all the same.  Not before he'd sampled all our recipes though, to make sure he knew what his favourite was.  Quite an assertive young man I'd say.

He wasn't the only one who appeared to have a refined palette.  This little one was definitely more of a berry girl and she took her time in sampling it.

Generally the conversation centred around the health benefits and tastiness of the drinks, but we had our share of hot topics to cover including the British Summer and the flood damage in Hammersmith.

And that's how our afternoon went.  In such a cosy environment we couldn't help but remember the early days of innocent - and here's a picture to prove it.  Our thanks to the lovely people of the Grove Neighbourhood Centre, for reminding us that small can have a big heart.