Ode to Fruit
Post a comment
Thursday, March 1st, 2007
Song I wrote the lyrics to and performed by Nathan. When innocent featured it on their blog, the comments picked up on the fact that Nathan has SCARY FREAKING EYES. Good “acting” dude.
Posts Tagged ‘innocent drinks’
Last year I went to Pizza Hut
Saturday, February 19th, 2005
Forget Easter. Forget Shrove Tuesday. Forget Halloween. In fact, forget all semi-religious oriented events except Christmas. Birthdays are definitely where it’s at. They have the edge over Christmas because it’s simply a day devoted to you and no-one else. And that was the theme for this year; I wanted to simply indulge myself by surrounding myself with people and things I treasured.
So I spent my birthday in someone else’s offices.
It’s all my grandmother’s fault really. In 2001 or so she gave my brother and I tickets for the mediocre London Dungeon attraction in central London. Bored of the queue, I went to a Starbucks peddler and procured an innocent smoothie.
”What’s an innocent smoothie?” I thought to myself.
”Why, it’s simply lots of fruit, post-blender,” the label informed me, “all in a nice bottle.”
”So I paid almost £2 for fruit?” I cried, “Where are my additives and preservatives? Artificial flavourings, why hast thou forsaken me?”
”Ahhhhh,” the label continued, “do you not see? Ahhhhh.”
And so began my special relationship with the teeny tiny bottles and the company I’ve come to regard as more than a friend. No, I’m blowing it all out of proportion. I’m making it sound much more than it is. We’re just friends, OK? And anyone who says that I’ve spent illicit nights in bed with the empty plastic bottles, sharing things that should be kept purely betwixt man and beast is lying.
Betwixt is a word that you don’t hear that often nowadays.
Arranging the trip was easy. Ian succumbed simply because he too is fanatical about the drinks company, Kirsty came along to back up all the research she’d done in A-Level Business Studies about their marketing techniques, and Nathan because… well… he came last time too. To be honest, I don’t think any of them had anything better to do.
I don’t get to see Ian or Nathan a lot, which tends to make me a bit hyperactive whenever I do see either of them. In that way I’m like a small puppy whose master has just returned from work. In that way, and three others.
So when I learnt Nathan was coming home for a bit due to stress-onset blindness he was suffering from, I grew almost giddy with pleasure, but also a little bit sad for Nathan. Mostly giddy, though. What could we do? Badminton! It was arranged that Nathan and Tamzin, one of Kirsty’s flatmates, would team up against Kirsty and I. It would be Christians versus the heathens. And Christians are notoriously useless at sport. They went up against some lions in Roman times and just sat and got eaten. Rubbish. I yearn to use the taunt, “Where’s your God now?”. Kirsty promised to try her best. I don’t know what she was worried about; if we can’t beat a blind man at badminton I don’t know what we can do.
It didn’t pan out in the end; Tamzin wasn’t available, so Matt the substitute flatmate was on Nathan’s team. So the score doesn’t matter, really. Just forget it. Move on.
Because Nathan couldn’t come to London till the Friday, this would leave Ian, Kirsty and myself alone in London on the Thursday. Additionally me and Ian would be arriving around midday. So naturally the plan was to spend our time creating a false Nathan. A facsimile if you will. Identical in all ways to his precursor, except he wouldn’t be babbling on about God every chance he got.
Charity shops aren’t as easy to come across in London as in, say, Lowestoft High Street, so we adopted a well thought out plan: we’d get on a random tube, ask Ian to think of a number between 2 and 7, and get off after that many stops. It worked a treat, and we exited Victoria Tube Station to a veritable feast of charity shops. Admittedly it took us a while to find, but once we’d walked past the coach station, past the Queen Mother Sports Centre (lot of good that’s doing her. I say open it up to the public. Let us commoners make use of some of the gazillions of pounds of investment), past the strange religious man who looks a bit like Batman, to the shop advertising aid for Albania or something. It doesn’t matter, they had a bright red bow tie the woman gave us for free after spending a bargain £5 on clothing. Admittedly the shirt had some stinking yellow stains down the front, but I think it was still worth it.
Some sellotape, a ball of string, tissue paper, balloons, felt tips and some stolen newspapers later and we were done. Returning to our hotel room after meeting Kirsty, we set to work.
The plan was initially to go direct from innocent’s Fruit Towers to Victoria, to Dover, then to Calais via ferry. Unfortunately France cancelled on us. The poshest woman ever and her friends at P&O had called Ian with some excuse that France is having berth problems and so aren’t letting any foot passengers on. I think they must have intercepted news on my plan to invade their stinking “country”. With another night in London, we could spend longer at innocent, then create merry mayhem in the city, whilst actively boycotting French “produce”. I have to ask, is it simply coincidence that the French “word” for their capital “city” sounds a bit like piss? Capital city? More like capital shitty. Amirite?
Meeting Nathan at Goldhawk Road he seemed almost unwilling to recognise our recreation of himself in balloon and stinking charity clothing. Later he would come to love and accept him. Later everyone would come to love and accept him.
Innocent has changed a lot since we were there all those years ago. Not ideologically speaking of course, they’re still wonderful in every way, hell bent on providing goodness in bottles to willing customers across the continent, but they’ve blossomed and expanded into a respectable grown-up company. I could tell from the grass-styled carpeting.
I revealed some cakes I had made for all the staff. They had Guilty written on them, and I’d altered the innocent dude so he had horns and a little tail (do you understand? Cakes are bad for you, do you see?). As well as this I’d had produced badges for us all stating “i celebrated barry’s birthday / in an office environment”. Because we had. The trouble I went to, doing all this is fairly remarkable, and I owe a dept of thanks to Eric at 50pbadges.com, Aaron at anycake.com, Martha at Primrose Bakery, and the database at whatthefont.com.
We sat and chatted to Rowena again, catching up on what we’d been up to (all got jobs), whether we’d been to Fruitstock (of course we had), what Nathan II was in aid of (bored), whether my website was still up (it is now, doubters) then Row disappeared for a bit. We chatted idly, enjoying a smoothie and a cake, then I heard the best sound ever; everyone from innocent singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to me. After blowing out the candles on the cake, I was lost for words, so I just said “Cheers!” and invited everyone to have one of my cakes, which summed everything up quite well.
Then, to top it all off, I met Richard, one of the Founders. I’d never met a Founder before, so I was a bit nervous. He got on well with Nathan II, though. Almost too well. Then Adam, another Founder came up to me. This was a bit much for me. There’s a limit to how much enjoyment one can take on ones’ birthday. As bad as it sounds, I had to leave.
The rest of the weekend is still kind of a blur. I know we went to see The Spongebob Squarepants Movie (summarily dismissed by Kirsty as “unrealistic”), and I know we ate at some steakhouse, but I think it’ll take me a while to get over the experience. In about three years I think I’ll be ready to return once again. I wanted to write “to wreak havoc…” at the end of the previous sentence, but I think if I did, I might not be allowed back. It’s not even as if I want to wreak havoc, I just said wanted to say it to emulate a poorly written science-fiction bad guy.