down on the farm

Yesterday, some of us went along to do a day's volunteering at Hounslow Urban Farm, one of London's largest community farms.

They have a whole host of animals there, including 5 breeds of pig, some goats, sheep and cows and even a few rheas chipmunks. It's a lovely place.

While they were there, our volunteers got the chance to name a little lamb. They decided to call her 'Carlton' or 'Carly for short. Carlton is Jon Wright's middle name so it's a fitting tribute indeed.

They then spent the day building some very fine animal shelters and mucking out the odd field. Which was all very helpful according to Mary who works there.

Jeremy even managed to rescue a runaway sheep on his way back to the car.

Whaddaguy.

on your bike

This is Ben. Ben works for Cycle Training UK, who teach people how to use their bikes safely and cycle with confidence on the roads. And if you live or work in London, quite a few local authorities subsidise the training. Which means it's free.

Seeing as that cycling proficiency test was probably a while ago now and the playground you did it in lacked speeding cars and buses, it's a great way to improve your cycling technique and gain some confidence on the roads.

You get 4 hours of one-to-one tuition, during which you learn all about assertive road positioning and how to slow down traffic with your eyes. Your instructor will also teach you how to use your gears properly, check if your bike is roadworthy and will even accompany you on your ride to work to make sure your route is as safe and swift as possible.

Plus if you're good, they'll give you a shiny set of badges to prove your roadworthiness.

This sort of scheme is available in towns and cities up and down the country. So why not have a look on your local council website to see if you can get some free training and a set of posh new badges to impress your mum.

Back in '89, it was Cycling Proficiency. Now they're calling it Bikeability. How times change.

duck shaped

Recently we ran a competition for our family to upload pictures of funny shaped fruit/veg/crisps/cloud formations to our flickr group so as to make the days here pass a little quicker.

We started the ball rolling with this duck shaped peanut:

All entries were then judged by Ben W (aged 22) and we're pleased to reveal that the 3 winning photos are:

The mutant ninja carrot from outer space

The beetroot penguin (he's the one on the left)

And the double banana.

Congratulations to Geli b, melandjedi and eviljamr who each win a shedload of smoothies and a nice pair of innocent gloves which are shaped in the form of hands.

out with the old

Our Matt's old semi-tartan trousers have gone. They were won in an eBay auction by someone called Caroline, who paid £132 for them. Worth every penny.

L - new pants, R - old auctioned pants

Matt was sad to see them go, but happy at the fact that all proceeds will go to Orangutan Appeal UK, and also touched that his mum and dad sent him a new pair of patterned pants to replace the old ones. He is one lucky boy.

let us pray

Clover, one of the first innocent vans ever to grace the highways of Britain passed over to the car crusher in the sky last week. She has done us proud, serving alongside Ermintrude, Belle and our grassy herd for many years. Goodbye.

you will be with us Clover, forever.

how many people can you fit in the post room?

To celebrate Meera's birthday, we tried to see how many people we could fit into the post room.

It's a small place so it soon filled up.

We finally got 35 people in there, including Meera herself, who is being held aloft by the crowd n the picture below.

Next year we're going to try it with the ladies' toilets.

monday makes you get it wrong

Today has been tough for our Ben. Not only is it the day after Sunday, when people feel tired and confused, it's also the day when he put odd shoes on before he left the house. He assures us that it's not a fashion thing; it's a cock up. Poor Ben.

something for the weekend

Stevie on the talk box.

And thanks for all of the bottle bottom suggestions this week. We're going to sit down in a minute and go through them all. Might take a while.

our felicity's on the telly

Please say hello to Felicity. Felicity is one of our product developers here which means she is responsible for coming up with new recipe ideas and then making sure they taste just right.

As the creator of our brand new blackberries, raspberries and boysenberries recipe, we thought it only fair that Felicity star in our other new telly ad.

In anticipation of all the fan mail she’ll be receiving, here’s a few more facts about our Fliss:

She likes baking (her speciality is a coconut macaroon)

She does a good cross stitch

She is a member of the Rabbit Welfare Association and has two of her own rabbits called Pistachio and David. You must pronounce David as 'Davv-id' or he will give you the cold shoulder.

getting to the bottom of things

Fancy writing something funny to go on the bottom of our bottles?

Yes? Great. Here's the rules.

Messages must be 40 characters or less.

Spaces, hyphens, apostrophes and stuff all count as a character.

Leave your entry as a comment to this blog post.

Fill in the email bit when you leave a comment so that we can get in contact with you if you win.

As many entries per person as you like.

Extra points for making us laugh.

Our 3 favourites will be used on millions of bottles across the land, something to tell the grandkids.

We'll send the 3 winners lots of smoothies too.

The deadline is Midnight on Thursday 24th January.

So be quick.

Update:
We've just chosen the winners and the standard was so high we ended up choosing 7 instead of 3. You can see who won and find out a bit more about their authors by clicking here with your mouse.

A big thank you to everyone who took the time to enter. We hope you enjoyed thinking up the messages as much as we enjoyed reading them.