What's Your Dream?

What's Your Dream? Simon Squibb (2025)

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The doorbell on the staircase to nowhere

There is a building in Twickenham that should not exist. It is four stories of grey concrete, four narrow windows wide, the orphan of a demolished block of flats. No address, no post box, no real reason to be standing. When Simon Squibb heard on the radio that a redundant staircase was going up for auction, he stopped what he was doing and started bidding. He paid thirty-four thousand pounds for it. People in the auction room laughed. The BBC and the New York Times called within minutes to ask why a man would buy the ugliest building in Twickenham.

He bought it because of a memory. When he was fifteen, his father had died of a heart attack in front of him, his mother had told him to leave home in a fight neither of them knew how to walk back, and he had spent winter nights walking up and down the main street of St. Neots to keep warm. One night a door was ajar on a fire exit. He crept inside, wrapped himself in his coat, and slept on the stairs. A staircase to nowhere had once been a sanctuary. Now he wanted to turn another one into a doorbell.

His team rigged the building with a video camera and an invitation. Anyone could come, ring the bell, and pitch their dream into the lens. People drove six hours from Scotland to do it. They stood there with a piece of paper, rehearsing once more, and pressed the button. Hundreds of dreams have been spoken into that door so far. The book you are about to read is what Squibb learned from listening to them, and from being the kid on the other side of the door, the one who needed help and could not find any.