hats off to the Appleby Litter Pickers

Fuelled by a combination of smoothies and home made flapjacks, these fine chaps have cleared around 9 miles of roads and lanes around their village and the surrounding area.

Back in March they'd collected almost 400 sacks of litter totalling a whopping 5.8 tonnes and are still going strong, determined to make where they live a cleaner, safer place.

 

They're also pretty good at juggling (apparently it's a requirement for anyone wishing to join in)

 

We think they deserve medals, pats on the back and never-ending cups of tea all round.

cat meat? thankfully not.

Llewelyn and his friends filmed a spoof documentary for a school project. They talk about our smoothies containing cat meat. We're happy to confirm that they contain nothing of the sort. If you have a spare 7 minutes or so, it's worth a look.

A big thank you to Llewelyn and co. for giving us something to chuckle about. Great acting.

vote now to choose your favourite mini movie

Pow... we had literally hundreds of entries to our mini movies competition and now it's time to reveal the 5 shortlisted movies picked by our special judging panel (who you read a bit more about here...).

Now it's up to you to cast your vote and decide who wins. Take a look at the videos below then pop on over to our You Tube channel to vote and help make someone famous.



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Superhero Smoothies by JJCampbell85

Thats Why they call him a Smoothie! by Thekeep245

Super Smoothie by foolhardyfilms

Vegetable Vengeance by MrWalsallCollege

innocent smoothie: The Attack of the Evil Snacks by enriquerovira

motivational poster # 17

If at first you don't succeed...

  

... take a nap.

What's red and juicy?

Si - that would be a delicious spanish strawberry. Nothing quite like the sunshine of southern Spain for creating great tasting strawberries (not to mention eating tapas, drinking sangria, flamenco dancing...)

 
However, the copious hours of sunshine are not matched by the availability of water - and in this region there are many different activities and things that require a lot of water -  such as agriculture, domestic use and important wetland ecosystems such as the Donana National Park.

We have teamed up with our supplier, Cordoba and Cranfield universities, Unilever and WWF to work with our strawberry farmers to measure exactly how much water is being used to grow our strawberries and find ways to improve water efficiency. Our goal is to establish how everybody and everything who uses the water can get what they need with no one missing out.

As we are now just over half way through the season, Jess, Rozanne and John went down to Spain to visit our farmers and the project team and find out how things are going. We are already seeing that there are some big differences in the amount of water used by each farm - not just because of how each farmer runs their farm but also because of the different soils, strawberry varieties, irrigation equipment and the growing method.  The final report with the complete water footprint for each farm is due in July and then we can work out whether it is possible to improve the water efficiencies of all our farms.

We also took the project team into the Donana National Park to learn more about this important wetlands.  Over 6 million migratory birds stop off at this wetlands during their migration between Africa and Northern Europe, and we were lucky enough to see quite a few of them.  

For now though it is back to the sunshine of London, Pimms rather than sangria. We'll keep you posted on how this project is going - and some advice from John - don't eat 2 boxes of strawberries in one go no matter how good they taste... 

 

our new home

Today the doors opened at Fruit Towers III. We've moved a few miles up the road, from Shepherds Bush to Ladbroke Grove (weirdly, just across the road from our very first office). It was a bit of a wrench, seeing as we'd been in the last place for nearly 11 years.

Thankfully, everyone seems very happy with the new place. It'll take some time getting used to but we already feel like it's ours. Once all of our crates are unpacked and the teabags have been located, we're going to get along just fine.

We're posting our finest instagrammed photos here if you fancy looking at a few more nooks and crannies.

goodbye goldhawk road

Goodbye, old friend. You have been the home. You have been the home for us.*

But it's time to move to pastures/offices new. We'll miss your breeze block, astrotruf halls

Your many entrances

All the fun times

 

The bendy times

And the snowy times when we should have been working

We'll miss the special rooms that weren't meeting rooms

 

And all the boring corners

Good times, good times.

Best of luck with all your future occupants, Goldhawk Industrial Estate

May they appreciate you as much as we did (and be slightly less messy and more respectable of your car park).

*and apologies for using the music of J Blunt to sing you out in style

how do you solve a problem like shoes?

According to the first page we clicked on when we Googled it, around 4543,400,000 people around the world wear some kind of foot covering on a daily basis. Some of these are very sensible indeed and own just one or two pairs which they wear until their toes poke through and then replace. Others own lots and lots of pairs which, if they're not careful, sneakily take over their houses, lying in wait at the top of the stairs ready for the late night toilet stumble, no doubt relishing the opportunity to educate on the dangers of excessive consumerism.

With Easter coming up, we thought it the perfect time to give you a quick run down of potential shoe storage options in the hope of saving some twisted ankles and egg-like bumps on heads.

 

 

First up is the Shoe wheel, perfect for the guy or girl with an array of identical and brightly coloured court shoes at their disposal. Probably not so great for workboots or wellies.

 

 

Next, we bring you Mariah Carey's shoe closet, complete with its own postcode, satellite navigation system and airport style motorised buggies. Absolutely perfect for Mariah Carey. 

 

Last but not least and our personal favourite is the shoe mountain, ideal for those who have better things to do than worry about where to keep their shoes.

 

scanwich anyone?

It's almost lunchtime and all we can think about is food. Really good, tasty food.

To make the next half hour all the more unbearable, someone just sent us a link to an amazing website called scanwiches. Take a look if you dare.

 
Thinly-sliced chorizo and manchego, on a pressed ciabatta

 
Roast beef, brie, tomatoes, greens, honey, dijon, on toasted french bread

 
Homemade roast beef, mustard, on a roll

If that hasn't inspired you to treat yourself this lunchtime, nothing will.

evil banana

 
Thomas sent us a picture of an evil banana on Twitter. To date, it is the only picture of an evil banana we've ever been sent. Thomas, this makes you an evil banana sending trailblazer. Nice work.