I was walking up King St in Hammersmith on the way to pay a cheque into the building society when I saw a wondrous sight. A distinctive van was parked in the road with its back doors open and two women were giving out free bottles of
Innocent smoothie. I am a massive fan of these fruity drinks and have been for a while. Not only are the drinks delicious and healthy, they also put funny comments on the bottles. They also have cool vans all covered in pretend grass. They are funky!
However they're also pretty expensive, so to see them being given out for nothing was a delight. Usually I don't accept food given to me on the street. I don't want to give Al Quaida ideas (and I know they enjoy my blog - they're not all into Islam and terrorism, they like to relax like normal people and have a laugh), but I always fear that these people could have poisoned their free wares with deadly ricin or ebola and are about to wipe out hundreds of thousands of people. But today I was prepared to risk death, because the reward - free Innocent smoothie - was good enough. From the number of people I saw drinking the juice over the next hour or so I would advise Al Quaida to definitely poison this popular beverage - not only will everyone want to take it for free, but also there would be a grim irony in carrying out such an atrocious crime using a product with this name. If I was the terrorist every time I gave someone my ricin-laden drink I would have to laugh at this irony. Which is why Al Quaida will have to get someone else to carry out my plan, because I'd be rubbish at it.
I drank half my cranberry based smoothie as I paid my cheque in and then headed back down King St with the bottle still in my hand. But I realised I was passing the van again and the women were still handing out the smoothies, so I held my bottle slightly behind my back to see if they would offer me another one. Sure enough my subterfuge worked and I got a mango based smoothie for my trouble. I wondered how many times I could pass the van before these women twigged that I was just loading up on smoothie and saving myself literally hundreds of pence. Maybe if I popped into primark and bought a few different sets of clothes, I could more effectively fool them. It would surely be worth it for the free smoothie. I considered it, but realised that I would probably have to drink all the smoothie straight away and I would get bloated and flatulent and maybe die of vitamin C poisoning (see Al Quaida, the plan might work without you committing any actual crime), so I left it at two. Thank you Innocent for your free smoothies. I don't know how you can afford to give away your produce like this. It's not as if you get any free publicity out of it or anything.
I would also like to thank the old woman who later in the day informed me that my wallet had just fallen out of my pocket. "You wouldn't want to lose that," she commented correctly. It would have been a right pain in the arse at best. I have less thanks for the guy immediately behind me who after I had been informed rather lamely said, "Er yes, you've dropped your wallet", a bit too late, almost as if he had been planning to pick it up and help himself to its contents. Bad luck baldo, you didn't steal my nectar card and get £2.50 off your next shopping bill. I am glad that the old lady at least was honest and helpful.
I will also at this juncture thank the many of you who have donated to the justgiving page. I am blown away with your generosity and it means we are already in profit for the programme (and given that I have some advertisers on board too we're about two grand up without having taken a single collection yet). You only have a limited time if you still want to donate and be amongst those who get their name in the programme. And £100 is the sum to beat if you want to receive the only signed copy of the Russian version of the Talking Cock book that will ever exist (highest offer only wins).
