2007 · Website
Notes on the origin of Always Your Pal, Melon!
from: Wonders Of Web Weaving podcast
Around 2007, I got my first laptop: a MacBook, and it had iWeb.
There was one disastrous summer holiday: it was supposed to be me and other kids, my mom and her friend and her partner, all going away together. In the end, only me and my mom made it.
We were stuck on a mountainside in Kerry with nothing to do and no other kids around.
I took a melon out of the shopping basket, drew a face, and pretended I was Tom Hanks in Cast Away.
I started this series where I carried it and photographed it, and because iWeb was on the laptop, I made a website about the melon.
I liked the idea of giving this melon its presence. When you build a project around something, it gives it a soul, it gives it a space. Drawing a face on the melon imbued it with a certain personality, and the more you build around it, the more that personality grows.
Of course, melons don’t last forever. That one, I wouldn’t let my mom throw out, so for a long time there was a moldy melon hanging around.