Name: Andrew Rutherford

Age: 125

Born In: an egg

Weight: Man sized

Height: Tall

Job: Dreamer

Hobby: Tiger Keeping

Loves : Tiny house Tigers (owns 3)

Hates: heights (being tall is hard for him)

Favourite colour: YELLOW

Andrew couldn't sleep.

 

A brilliant beam of ideas was slanting through a gap in the curtains. It was shining right on to his desk..

 

The other people in the company had been asleep for years now.

 

Andrew closed his mind and sat quite still. He tried again, very hard to sleep like them..

 

It was no good. The idea beam was like a silver blade slicing through the room on to his face.

 

The office was absolutely silent. No voices came up from downstairs. There were no footsteps on the floor above either.

 

The window behind the curtain was wide open, but nobody was walking on the pavement outside. No cars went by on the street. Not the tiniest sound could be heard anywhere. Andrew had never known such a silence.

 

Perhaps, he told himself, this was what they called the moment.

 

The moment, somebody had once whispered to him, was a special moment when a life was in a deep deep sleep, and all the bright dreams came out from hiding and had the world to themselves.

 

You got punished if you were caught letting your dreams begin to fly. Even if you said you were just thinking out of the box, that was not accepted as an excuse and they punished you just the same. But there was no one about now, Andrew was sure of that.

 

He longed to duck underneath them, lean out of the window to see what the world looked like now that the dreams were at hand.

 

The longing to look out became so strong he couldn't resist it. Quickly, he ducked under the curtains and leaned out of the window.

 

In the silvery idea light, the street he knew so well seemed completely different. The people looked bent and crooked, like ghosts in a horror tale. Everything was pale and ghostly and milky-white.

 

Across the road, he could see the shop, where you bought were allowed to buy “stuff”. It didn't look real. There was something dim and misty about that too.

 

Andrew allowed his eye to travel further and further down the street.

 

Suddenly he froze. There was something coming up the street on the opposite side.

 

It was something bright. . .

 

Something bright and very big. . .

 

Something very bright and very big and very scary

 

That’s how Andrew me the BFP

 

"A nod to Roald Dahl" – The BFP

 

The Big Freedom Project

 

This is my BFP and it was scary as hell when I met him. He had had been walking around with me for years quietly waiting for me to notice him and say hello. Actually couldn’t quite believe I hadn’t even noticed him. It felt as if I had been wandering around with a 25 foot tall slavering, roaring grizzly bear behind me and I had been totally oblivious.

 

When we sat down, had a coffee and my breathing recovered he chewed happily on a revolting recipe it became a bit clearer. Clearly I was insane, hands down lost it, foaming at the mouth, trouser eating loopy! For God’s sake someone call the mad van!

 

What had I been thinking and why hadn’t I been out there living life like it was actually fun? Just happy being along for the ride, lulled into being a spectator, a tourist.

 

Time to start driving my own destiny tour, and this is it, the BFP.

 

A bicycle, a route, a tent and woosh! Me and BFP are off.

Everyone has a BFP, hiding away, patiently waiting for them to notice it and have the courage to say hello to it. Check out yours and see what you find.

 

Look for all those dreams you had when the world was fresh and really ask yourself why not. Is more of the same really worth passing on those dreams? We are not talking about those dreams you have bought into as an adult but those dreams that define who you are.

 

Time to say hello to your BFP and have fun.