By Kyle MacNeill
I am allergic to anything too cutesy. Village fȇtes, tea cosies, yarn bombing and every television show prefixed by “The Great British” make me grimace. I don’t own pyjamas, a dressing gown or a hot water bottle. I don't get sick on a plane, but a round of applause upon landing is enough to make me retch. The thought of a cosy cup of cocoa sends shivers down my spine.
It makes no sense then, being the misanthropic misery that I am, that the Wallace and Gromit animated comedy franchise warms the cockles of my heart. How can a plasticine man wearing a green knitted vest and living the most twee existence possible with his dog give me so much joy? And why is it my deepest, darkest fantasy to live at the duo’s red-brick house, 62 West Wallaby Street, tucked up in a fluffy blanket, dunking biscuits into cups of tea with my own pup?
Inventor Wallace, a quintessential British eccentric, and Gromit, his exasperated hound, first appeared 35 years ago in Nick Park’s Oscar-nominated short A Grand Day Out, made using clay models and stop-motion animation. In the first few seconds, we see inside their home, with its William Morris-style floral wallpaper, a framed picture of cheese and — how quirky — a propped-up deckchair.
From there, the camera pans out to the warmly-hued living room featuring an old transistor radio, mismatched armchairs and shabby chic lampshade. Next, we enter the kitchen, complete with checkerboard floor tiles and a cupboard full of crackers. “No cheese, Gromit” says Wallace, staring into an icy, empty fridge — the very fridge later revealed in Wallace & Gromit: TheCurse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) to be a delicious pastiche: yes, it’s a SMUG.
In The Wrong Trousers (1993), we are welcomed into the dining room, with its dinky wooden chairs and a handy lever that Gromit pulls to eject Wallace from his chintz-quilted bed upstairs. But there is a darker side to this abode. Head down into the leaky, rat-populated cellar and you will see where Wallace and Gromit concoct all sorts of contraptions in slightly horror-dungeon surroundings.
Part of the magic of the house is that it is such a key part of the films’ plots. In The Wrong Trousers, Wallace is forced to sublet a spare bedroom due to financial issues, leading to arch-villain Feathers McGraw, a nefarious penguin disguised as a chicken, becoming the tenant from hell. “No more lodgers — more trouble than they're worth,” quips Wallace.
Rewatching the pair’s original adventures makes me genuinely emotional. It reminds me of a simpler time when I didn’t resist cosiness or mawkishness for fear of appearing too comfortable or complacent. As a child, everything didn't feel so cloying. The world — like Wallace and Gromit — seemed ready to be playfully shaped.
In some ways, my love of the house makes sense. While cosy things make me cringe, kitsch is my schtick — anything orange and mid-century — so some of the decor isn’t a million miles away from my taste. But poppy and gaudy is very different to soppy and gooey. Yes, I have a retro landline telephone in my rented loft apartment in Manchester, but a polka dot vase? No, thank you.
Perhaps, then, the house is both warmly familiar and detached from my reality, a retreat from my cynical, inner-city life. Call me crackers, but I wish I could up sticks for a while and head to West Wallaby Street to gorge on gorgonzola and build rockets to the moon.
Maybe I can sublet the spare room for a while. If I can get Wallace to change his mind about lodgers.
Photography: Alamy
