Once a small baby was born
A tiny baby called Benjamin
He was so tiny
His parents were worried
His family were worried
The friends of his family were worried
And as news spread through his village the villagers were worried
Tiny Ben
But Ben wasn’t worried.
He knew he was just the right size for the moment.
As the months passed Ben grew and by the time he started school he was pretty much the same size as the other children. Not too tall, not too small,
He knew he was just the right size for the moment.
Tiny Ben
It was around this time that the village was beginning to grow. More people moved into the area and new voices were heard. And as the village grew so did Ben. For the children and people who knew Ben they didn’t really notice, or they chose not to say anything. But, sadly, some of the newcomers would point and make comments about how tall ‘Tiny Ben’ was.
At first Ben never heard their comments so he wasn’t in any way upset or embarrassed by his height. He just knew he was tall. And his friends never treated him any differently although there were times when his size was a real help, like when rescuing balls and kites from trees.
He knew he was just the right size for the moment.
When the rest of his friends had stopped growing Ben carried on getting bigger and bigger. More and more people started to comment on the giant amongst them and Ben began to hear them. And the more people said, the worse Ben felt. He began to slouch and crouch to try to disguise his enormous height, but it was no good – he was so tall.
Soon he didn’t like going out with his friends because of the way people stared and talked. His mum and dad were worried, his friends were worried but most of the villagers didn’t seem to care that their comments could hurt. They excused themselves by saying ‘he’s big enough to deal with it.’ No one is big enough not to be hurt.
And still Ben grew and so did the village.
He began to believe he was just the wrong size for the moment.
Ben began to spend more of his time on the outskirts of the village and in the fields and countryside where he didn’t feel so self-conscious. And still he grew and so did the village which had become a town building on the green open spaces.
And now it was a town, it felt grown up, it needed organisation and order. It needed to feel important if it was going to attract investment and wealth. It needed to be ‘just so’ and a giant is never going be part of that. You don’t want anything that’s different.
So Ben became even more of a recluse until one fateful day.
Now that day had started as a perfectly normal day until one of the children at school had wandered off during playtime. Well perhaps wandered off is a little harsh, it was simply a case of following a butterfly that had flown into the playground. That butterfly had flown off out of the playground and through the town, through the streets and alleys trying to find the countryside. The child had followed the butterfly until they were quite lost.
Once the teachers knew the child was gone the search started and by the end of the morning everyone was looking. At a gathering of the important people it was decided the search needed more organisation and structure so the town was divided up into areas for teams to search – to no avail. Because the butterfly had led the child through the back streets and alleys in its search for a green space.
In desperation someone said, ‘if only we could look from above, we might find them.’
And that was when the children all shouted ‘get tiny Ben’. The important people were against the idea but the people went and asked him to come into the town. When he arrived people stared in amazement, he was so tall he could see down onto the streets, the roads and even the alleys and within moments Ben shouted ‘There, There.’
He knew he was just the right size for the moment.
Everyone was so happy that the little child was found and everyone knew that without Ben’s help it might not have happened. In fact the people decided that they should celebrate the occasion by building something to celebrate Ben. And so the idea formed to build a tower as tall as Ben that people could climb to the top of to be able to look down onto their land as he could. And they decided to put a big bell at the top to ring on special occasions.
And despite the important people saying they didn’t have permission, the tower was built by grateful villagers. And for years people came and climbed to the top to enjoy the view and to feel a sense of ‘wonder’. To be able to see the river and the countryside made them feel they lived somewhere special. The important people, who were never slow to claim credit, began to realise it was bringing people to the town. So they put more and more shops and cafes around the bottom of the tower.
Soon the important people began to believe it was their shops that brought the people in. They thought the tower was taking valuable space that they could build upon and they didn’t really need it. So one night, in the quiet of the dark, they tower was taken down and the bell taken away.
The next day as people noticed they were sad – they had grown to love the tower they called Ben Tall’s. They knew that a town without fun wasn’t special at all. And that made them sad. People need spaces for fun, for nature and to play and to feel joyful.
So nothing is left of Ben Tall’s tower other than people remembering the name. Although every so often some of the villagers talk of building a tower again to allow people to see the town in a different way. And some say maybe bring the bell back – if only people could track down where Big Ben’s bell had gone
