wallie is a teeny ty alligator who caught my attention when i was walking around a town inbetween job interviews in october 2023. i saw his little face sticking out of a display and just had to take him home - he was only £4! me and my partner, nick, have a fairly big collection of plush toys - now mainly jellycats - and wallie was one of the first few in the squad. little did we know at that time, he'd grow to become a main character in both our and our families' lives.
wallie at christmas | wallie on his 'holibay'
slowly, wallie came to have a voice, though which part of the world his accent is from would confuse even the best dialectologists (me and nick decided it's largely northern english - yorkshire way, just about). i started taking him places - to show my mum, my dad and my stepmum, how cute he was. he started off being sweet and polite, his catchphrase being 'hello, i'm wallie'and generally everyone shared my belief that he was adorable. he was a little alligator with, for some reason, ears? and tiny little felt feet, now simply called 'his felts'. wallie was becoming his own entity, his own personality, his own force.
me + wallie on the steps up to whitby abbey
wallie has worked for NASA; he has worked as a model for lacoste, a doctor, a midwife, a dentist. in all of these careers he was just 'too good' and had to quit. he was born in a swamp and his mummy gator was poached and turned into a handbag, and his dad served in the vietnam war, and he left the swamp and came over to be sold in the buxton branch of ryman. or so he says. easter is his 'laying season' where he lays chocolate eggs, though he ends up misplacing them every year. his favourite food is the mcdonalds salt packets.
wallie + his card from my dad + stepmum | wallie and my 26th birthday cake
what wallie wants more than anything in the world, however, is a range rover. specifically, a 'range, colour green, numberplate W4LLI3, heated seats and heated steering wheel'. this further expanded to include a private road after wqtching UK dashcam compilations on youtube with me and nick. his daily life revolves around his pursuits to get a range - often trying to trick nick into getting him a range, needing to go to the range dealership, saying he's secured a loan in his name (for a range), offering his dental and doctoral services in exchange for a range, amongst others. on his ruthless quest to get a range rover, he managed to get blacklisted and banned from every single range dealership in the country, so it has to be nick who goes and buys him his range. or so he says.
wallie in his funeral suit | wallie in his bed
wallie has more belongings than me and nick put together. he has a whole wardrobe, a lot of which are jumpers that my mum used to make for him. after my mum passed, nick, without me knowing, went on a mission in our town to commission a black suit for wallie to wear for the funeral. he succeeded, but only after asking 3! different people for 'a custom knitted funeral suit for my toy alligator'; somehow he didn't get the police called on him. this remains one of the nicest and most thoughtful things that anyone has ever done for me, and i nearly cried upon receiving it, and it made one of the hardest days of my life a little bit better.
wallie + daisy ready for a spa night | wallie + daisy having a picnic
wallie decided one day that he wanted a girlfriend, so me and nick sourced him one. enter daisy, a straight-faced, fluffy snail, from san-x's collection of sumikko gurashi plushes. daisy sounds just like wallie - just higher pitched. in spite of wallie often mistreating daisy or having inane arguments with her, they still want to get married one day, however they can't get married until they both receive range rovers as wedding presents (daisy's custom range is 'colour white, numberplate D4ISY', for anyone curious). wallie also states that before they have any future children, they will all have to have range rovers ready for them when they are born.
wallie when he was brand new! | one of my favourite pictures of wallie
wallie loves nothing more than a funeral, due to the fact that he has no idea what they actually mean - he just thinks they're a day out where he gets to dress up, drink whiskey, and socialise. he also loves holidays ('holibay', he says), and my stepmum had a whole book made up of photos of him that we took when me and nick went to whitby in july 2024. usually his days consist of annoying nick and babysitting skye, who he refers to as 'the horse', due to her size and lankiness in comparison to him. his biggest fear is being sent to the charity shop, which nick threatens him with when he's being particularly irritating.
wallie looking at his 'holibay' photo album | wallie looking at his dream car
wallie's life took a strange turn of events when he found out that he was actually a royal. out of curiosity, i googled wallie and found that he wasn't from the latest series of teeny tys at the time, nor was he available to purchase on ebay, or any websites. upon finding this out, wallie declared he was royal. my mum (wallie's 'granny mel') also heard about this, and so the next time we visited her, she had rolled out a red throw for a red carpet, and had a throne (a pillow) ready for him to sit on. i was also playing handel's 'arrival of the queen of sheba' through my speaker which made my mum burst out laughing because she predicted that i'd play it for wallie on entering her house.
(my mum later found an ebay listing for a wallie and called wallie out for his royal lies. wallie did not, and still has not, backed down, and still ascertains the fact that he is royal.)
i came home from work one day to nick having created this scene on the bed. yes he crafted the tiny crown and staff, somehow, with his huge hands
wallie isn't just a little plush alligator to us - he's become and almost sentient being, a source of entertainment, a friend. as children, my mum used to give voices to many of mine and my brother's plush toys - they became characters, with stories and personalities, with ups and downs - they were friends to us. when i first introduced wallie to my mum, voice and all, she remarked 'you are a child!' to which i replied that yes i am, but i get it from her! these memories of my childhood are ones i cherish, and are ones that now live in wallie. plus, if me and nick ever win the lottery one day, we are actually going to buy that range rover.
george frideric handel's 'arrival of the queen of sheba' plays aggressively
