cake delivery service

A few enterprising souls are doing cake deliveries in Fruit Towers today to raise money for Body and Soul, a charity supporting children, young people and families affected by HIV. The idea is that those of us who didn't spend the whole night baking wonky-looking offerings can pay to have them delivered to someone we like in the office. Or, in the case of the heart shaped lemony biscuits, someone whose teeth we'd quite like to break.

last minute love

It's Valentine's Day tomorrow. And if you haven't already made plans for the one you love/lust/like, there's still time to pull something special out the bag. Here are a few ideas to get the romance section of your brain fired up:

1. Make a personalised smoothie label.

Just click here to unleash your inner Casanova and pen your declarations of love (or pinch one of the ones we've already written). Then, print it out and stick it onto a smoothie bottle, hand it over and wait patiently for them to succumb to your charms.

2.Make a 3D chalk creation that your loved one will see on their way to work.

Something love inspired would be nice. You'd better get started now.

3. Write them a hug note on a post-it.

4. Have a carpet picnic complete with Malteser tiffin and homemade tortilla chips and salsa dip.

5. Send an e-card of a loved up pair of animals via Friends of the Earth. Another environmentally friendly option is to reuse a card from a previous year.

7. Make a mix CD.

Vickers got this for her birthday and we're all pretty jealous. It's got the 32 songs that have been number one on her birthday each year.

8. Embrace your inner cynic, hop on board the "Valentine's Day was invented by the card companies" bus and let it pass unnoticed. If your beloved complains, question why you loving them every other day of the year isn't enough.

spinning for charity

Some of Fruit Towers' fittest are cycling from London to Brighton soon to raise money for Body and Soul, a charity supporting children, young people and families affected by HIV. Today they've donned their lycra to raise awareness and collect our loose change by keeping an exercise bike going for the whole day.

We think that's a brave effort for a Monday.

Here's Philippa W doing her shift.

introducing gary goyle

Meet Fruit Towers' latest resident, Gary Goyle. Our office superhero, Conor, came across young Gary at the local garden centre and couldn't resist bringing him back with him. Gary hasn't been welcomed by everyone though, as Neil the gnome, who might have been called Gary in a previous life, has taken to turning him round each night to face the flower trough. Spooky stuff.

happy birthday to our juice carafe

Today is our juice carafe's first birthday. To celebrate we sang happy birthday, we played pass the parcel and Dave F's wife made this rather lovely orange sponge cake. Being an inanimate object our carafe wasn't able to enjoy the cake, so we did the decent thing and helped it out. It was delicious.

You may also remember that last week we set you the challenge of writing an ode to our juice carafe. We had some cracking entries but there could only be 3 winners, so a big well done to Lydia, Paulme and Becky whose tales of hullabaloo, marching bands and vodka made us smile a lot.

Its our juice carafe's first birthday,
We are planning to have a great laugh,
All our staff will be singing hip hip hip hooray,
For the success of our posh jug, the carafe.
The apples and oranges, all of our fruits,
The staff, and Richard Reed too,
Are going to strip down to their birthday suits,
And cause quite a hullabaloo.

It's our juice carafe's first birthday
A Juice of high repute
Twelve months of loving labour
Devoted to the fruit
The finest natural product
From Innocent to you
Add a drop of Vodka
And make it naughty too

It's our juice carafe's first birthday,
Bring on the marching band,
Bursting with fruit and here to stay,
They're the zest-iest in the land.
So let's dance for joy and celebrate,
Gather round all your friends,
'Cos they're never made from concentrate,
And there's even some exciting new blends.

 

Thanks to everyone who entered and congratulations to Lydia, Paulme and Becky. A case of our juice will be on its way to you shortly.

a new bench

We like fruit and we like sitting down, so really it was only a matter of time before we got ourselves a bench modelled on a banana.

It wasn't something we could create ourselves though, so luckily help came in the form of builder and wood carver extraordinaire Neil Melville Rae.

The banana is one of a number of fruit sculptures that Neil's been working on which were submitted to last year's Arundel Gallery Trail as an exhibition called "The Temple of the Strange Fruit".

The wood used for the sculptures came from a 200 year old oak tree which was sourced locally to Neil in West Sussex. The tree had been dead for some time and was in a dangerous condition, so it was carefully felled and put to good use.

 

Here's the model for the banana sculpture.

And here it is being made.

It took a few strapping men to carry it in.

And now it sits pride of place in the chill out.

dress up friday

Because the majority of us at Fruit Towers wander about the place looking like a gap year student who's had his shoes stolen, we took the opportunity last week to dress in proper business attire to see what effect it would have on productivity.

Janel and Charlie managed to do the things they needed to do in record time, all because they were dressed so powerfully.

 

The lads from IT tore through their workload too, solving a lot of problems by telling people to turn their computers on and off and cross their fingers. This left them with a bit of spare time to hang around on the roof terrace and live out their fantasy of becoming contestants on The Apprentice.

And the ladies who'd chosen to wear heels found themselves unable to leave their desks after 11.30am, meaning that lunches were skipped and productivity hit an all time high.

All in all, it was a huge success, and by forcing people to pay for the pleasure of dressing uncomfortably we even managed to raise some money for LEAP, a fantastic charity who work with young people and jobless adults and help them to overcome their circumstances to fulfil their potential and play a fuller role in society.

wise words for a friday

Everyone knows that raisins go in mouths, not sinks.

new year, new mug

 

banana phone reality

We've had the bananaphone in Fruit Towers since Day 1 (even though it went walkies for a few years and was  taken hostage along the way too). You can call it whenever you like to ask whatever you like and whilst you might not get the authority on Austrian dirndl techniques, you will always get an answer of some sort and someone jovial to chat to.

And interestingly, it turns out that bananas could end up being phones of the future, thanks to some smart folk over in Japan.

A couple of professors at the University of Tokyo have created a clever augmented reality that can make normal household gubbins into communication devices.

Pizza box into laptop. Pack of cards into an iPod.

And, yes, banana into a telephone

It's called 'invoked computing' and you can read all about how it works here.

We're just chuffed to have been 12 years ahead of science.

Cheerful. Helpful. Limited knowledge of embroidered Alpine fashion