Wally by Libby Tidley
This song was both easy and difficult to write. We had been given the ‘a member of your family’ brief and I was planning on writing about my cousins, but that night, when I got home, my mum told me that we were having to rehome the younger of our two labradors, Wally, because he’s snapped at one of the smaller children again.
It wasn’t his fault; he’d grown up in a family where I was the only child, and I was 18 when we got him so he wasn’t used to small children pulling his tail and lying on him. The kids didn’t understand either, even though we told them time and time again not to. In the end, with how stressed Wally was getting and how stressful and on edge the whole house felt the majority of the time, it was the best decision. But it was still difficult. I locked myself in my room and cried for a good four hours and wrote this song with a bleeding heart. He was rehomed a week later.
I wanted to write this song so that you couldn’t 100% tell which member of my family this was about - and yes, dogs count - and I think I did well, although the ‘stealing shoes and running miles’ line tipped a few people off. But I wanted to capture his spirit in the lyrics. I think I did reasonably well. He’s a red fox coloured labrador (the colour of soaked through sand... look up that colour labrador and you’ll understand). He was cheeky and handsome and wonderful and I love him so much.