‘Lemon Tree Films’ isn’t just a cool business name. If you haven’t already guessed, everything we do has to have meaning and intention to us… and ‘Lemon Tree Films’ is no different.
We deliberated a lot over our business name (16 years ago now), after all, it’s our identity and we believed at the time (as we do now) that our identity should be an ode to our own story together… And our story started with a Lemon Tree.
We met in Spain in 2007. We were both living and working there, myself only for 6 months but Shaun had been there on and off for 6 years.
Side note: Shaun actually speaks fluent Spanish but he’s so modest that he doesn’t tell anyone… I don’t have that problem though and love to brag about him whenever possible! Here’s the proof of that! Haha.
Anyway… Shaun was working in a really sleezy tourist bar which I used to frequent every night (I was young, drunk and stupid what can I say?) and he never charged me for a drink… Smooth operator.
One night I asked Shaun for a Tequila shot and of course he obliged… but he didn’t give me salt and lemon so I asked him. “And the Lemon?”. I had no idea why he seemed so smug when he presented me with the lemon until much later (we’ll get to that). Then I asked him “and the salt?” to which he turned round to face the back of the bar and started looking for the salt but I wondered why I could see his shoulders shaking from laughter. That is, until he turned around and presented me with a bag of Salty Chips. I found it hilarious obviously but I didn’t say a word; I just took the bag, opened it, took out a chip, licked it, then knocked back the tequila and sucked on the wedge of lemon.
It was the bag of chips that made a lasting impression on me, but it was only months later that Shaun told me that the real twist of fate was the lemon. That night was the only night in the entire 6 month summer season that there was a lemon in the bar… just 1 single lemon… and it was Shaun that had decided to pick it from a tree in his garden that day (even though every other day he had looked at that tree and never even considered it).
I don’t know about you but we believe in fate and so we’ve always felt that that Lemon Tree that was the first step in our very long and happy journey.
We actually made this story a focal point of our wedding ceremony so you should definitely watch our own (very dated but still wonderful)
