as if it were yesterday

We have to apologise that it's taken us so long to upload a film about our village fete this summer. Its been quite a while since the fete, it's got very cold between then and now for example.

But watching the highlights from our weekend in Regent's Park back in August has managed to warm us all up a bit this morning. It feels like it was only yesterday.

I'm going to go and buy an ice pop.

(The music is by The William Fairey Band incase you are wondering. They also played at our fete on Saturday to a raptuous reception).

and the winners of the fete flickr competition are...

The results are in and after a hotly contested vote we now have the 3 winners of our village fete flickr competition. We give you:

The best picture of bunting 2007

By Little Teabag.

Best fete game picture 2007

By Richard S.

And the best overall fete picture 2007

By Pirate Internet.

We'll be in direct contact with all 3 winners via flickr mail very soon. Congratulations to all of you on your imminent year's supply of smoothies. Don't drink it all at once.

every loser wins

It's been over ten long years since Wicksy first sat down at a piano and tinkered out 'Every Loser Wins' (they had amazing acoustics in the Queen Vic back then). Well this week we learnt the hard way the true poignancy of Wicksy words.

Do you remember our attempt to break the world record for the longest bunting in the world at our village fete in Regent's Park? We failed. We didn't quite make it. The current record is still held by Wendy Hughes, helped by 6,000 Buckinghamshire school children.

It's taken us a while to measure up all the different bits of bunting but the final total came to 0.455 miles, 771.72 metres short of the record unfortuanetly.

But as Wicksy sang, every loser does indeed win and we have also won in many ways...

You sent us so much beautifully hand made bunting we felt truely in awe of your creativity and dedication.

We got to hang out with the Girl Guides for a weekend as they helped us to organise our attempt.

It got us all together for a lunch time of bunting making at fruit towers and cheered the office up with the tangles we put up afterwards (I bet the Central Office of Information has never looked like this on a random Wednesday in July).

And we all had a lovely couple of days out in the park.

We're sorry that we failed, you can't win them all though as they say. We are humble in our failure but would like to thank every single one of you who helped or donated bunting to the attempt.

Just watch this space next year, we're determined to get in that book now.

(Oh and if you fancy getting yourself one of those ghetto blasters that were all the rage in Albert Square in 1986 then have a look here).

make someone's year

You probably remember that we started a village fete flickr group a while ago with a prize of a year's supply of smoothies to the best photo in each of the 3 categories. Well the time has come to decide on the 3 winners, the only problem being we can't decide.

So we're hoping you can help us by visiting our voting page and selecting your favourite photos from our shortlist. We'll then announce the winners in our family newsletter on Wednesday 19th September (you can join our family here if you aren't already a member). Voting will close at midnight on Sunday September 16th.

Go vote.

the heat is on

Mark Frith (Chief Editor at heat magazine) must have been to a good selection posh parties and rubbed shoulders with a few stars this summer so we were very pleasantly surprised when we saw he named our village fete as his favourite highlight of the summer so far.

After the pinnacles of this and our mention in Grazia magazine our Claire (who looks after all things press like) is having a bit off time off now. She's gone to have a little baby actually, but she can have it knowing that she helped us to get into two of the Nation's grandest magazines.

a little goes a long, long way

We're still adding up the last of the numbers but at this point it looks like we were able to raise £150,000 for our three chosen charities this year. The vast majority of this was from ticket sales, all of the proceeds of which went to directly to the charities. To put this into perspective, at Fruitstock last year, about twice as many people came and we raised £35,000. Still a lot of money but we're really pleased to have smashed that amount this year.
       
We have to admit early on we had to think hard about if ticketing was going to be the right thing to do this year. The fact that we've been able to raise over four times the amount of money for what we believe are great causes makes that worry worthwhile now. We'd like to thank you all for buying the tickets, without you it would have been just us in the park and £15 in the charity pot (we had to test the ticket buying system a couple of times).
       
Our three chosen charities this year were Samaritans, Friends of the Earth and WellChild by the way.

Thanks again, from us and the charities.

so this is goodbye

We've just finished taking down the last of the bunting and tents in Regent's Park after the great weekend. Here's a shot that Andrew got of the site last night. Until next year.

some more fete photos

We're still finding it hard to get bored of photos from the fete. It's probably the memories they bring back. Here are some more that we really like by our Jenny's Pete. Cheers Pete, great shots.

Keep uploading yours to our flickr group. We've got over 1,300 now.

fete photos for flickr

We've just uploaded a load of our own photos from the weekend to the village fete flickr group (you can see all of our ones here). Have a look over some of our favourites...

The flickr group is filling up really nicely now with your own pictures. Some of you really have got a bit of an eye photography haven't you.

what did you think of our fete?

What a weekend. Thank you to everyone who came along on Saturday or Sunday to join in the welly wanging, the ferret racing, the prize draw or all of those who just sat under a tree and pretended they lived in the countryside. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.

We'll be updating our village fete website and flickr group over the next few days with our own photos and stuff – please feel free to add your own pics to the flickr group as well. There's even a year's supply of smoothies up for grabs of the best 3 pictures, so it's worth a go.

We'd also love to know what you thought of our fete...

It's the first time we've put together our own fete and we're sure there's some stuff we did better than others. Let us know what you loved, what you liked and what you thought you could have done without. What were your own highlights? Just leave a comment on this post or drop us an email if you prefer to hello@innocentdrinks.co.uk.

The keen bloggers amongst you may wish to 'TrackBack' to this post if you've written your own post on the fete as well (use the special URL at the bottom of this post).

All suggestions and comments, no matter how big or small, will be added to our big list and taken into account for next year.

Oh and is anyone missing a pair of sun glasses? Or a ferret?

We found the above photo by Martin Isaac in our village fete flickr group. Please upload yours as well if you fancy.

the innocent village fete day two

Blue skies and sunshine for the second day running. How lucky are we? Someone must have had a word with Michael Fish. And so then here are just some of the highlights from Sunday...

People enjoying the shade. Thank you trees.

Even more bunting making with the Girl Guides.

People dropping by for a stitch or two in our knitting tent.

Cheer leaders reaching for the skies on the village green.

Dog agility by persuasion on the village green.

Teach A Man To Fish sack races in the sunshine.

A very high standard of alfresco dancing.

And our drinks continued to prove a popular attraction...

hats reunited

One visitor to the fete today was delighted to find a knitted hat she sent into us a few weeks ago that had been selected for our Big Knit display cases in the come and say hello area. We got a polaroid of the two together before they parted ways again.

Update: Here's a beter photo we found in our flcikr group...

the innocent village fete day one

We were blessed with sunshine and blue skies today for the first day of our big village fete in Regent's Park. Here are just some of the highlights so far...

People enjoying the sunshine. There was a lot of it.

Bunting making with the Girl Guides.

Duck herding.

Rolly pollies on the village green during the Gymnastics workshop.

A Town Crier testing the dog agility course.

Lots of Morris dancing throughout the day.

Lovely flower arranging by our Aliana's sister.

Adem playing 'God Only Knows What I'd Be Without You' on the acoustic stage on a very small guitar in that nice t-shirt with two red circles and two green rectangles again. What are those small guitars actually called?

The William Fairey Band working the hay barn crowd into a frenzy with their brass band versions of acid house classics. They are probably the only brass band in the country to get this kind of reaction on a Saturday afternoon at a fete I imagine.

Plus our smoothies were very popular which was a relief.

Oh and I spotted Louis Theroux wandering around. Appreciating the stranger bits probably.

tickets update

Our online ticket sales are now closed. You can still get tickets for both Saturday and Sunday on the day though by going to the ticket portacabins which are open from 11AM each day. Tickets are £5 for adults, £2.50 for kids with infants of 0-3 years going for free the lucky things. As with our online ticket sales there will be no hidden booking fee or anything funny like that.

Availability is limited, so please get there early and bring the right change to help keep the queus moving quickly.

On the day ticket sales are located on the Broadwalk between the Ready Money Fountain and Chester Road, below the South Gate. Right here...

Every single penny from tickets sales goes to our three chosen charities Samaritans, Friends of the Earth and WellChild by the way.

go betty

It was with great excitement this morning that we headed off to the south bank to see a bit of GMTV being filmed. Betty, who is running the dog agility spot at the Village Fete tomorrow was telling Keith 'Cheggers' Chegwin all about mans best friend, and Cheggers even got to have a go taking Jessie round the course. He didn't do very well apparently, so Betty made him eat a dog biscuit.