The Scots Magazine July 2005, page 67
In Remembrance Of Jamie: an unforgettable celebration of a life cut tragically short
On 11th July 2003, eight days after he had left Carrbridge Primary School, a bright,enthusiastic, eleven-year-old boy called Jamie Colin Gasking tripped and fell at the Falls of
Bruar in Perthshire. He was killed instantly.
To imagine the agony of his mother who was with him at the time, his father who was
shopping in Aviemore, his older brother who was finishing a Basketball Training camp in
Perth and his older sister at a National Youth Theatre summer school in Glasgow is almost
too painful to contemplate.
Hey, Mr Big! by Jamie's father, David Gasking, is not just a tribute to his beautiful son, not
just a moving memoir. It is a simple and heart-rending story that somehow converts the
bleakest of all possible losses into something positive, intensely personal and ultimately
healing.
When someone close to us dies, one of the things we all miss is conversation. This book is
told in a series of short chats between Jamie and his father with the reader listening in. There
is no chronological order but each short piece is clearly dated and takes the form of a shared
memory of some event within those 11 years of Jamie's life and the year after his death.
There are letters, poems, songs, programmes and plans, all of which point to Jamie's many
passions and interests. There are school reports, concerts, Scout camps, cycling trips,
cartoons and animations ?it was his ambition to become an animator ? and reading, with
Harry Potter books high on the list of favourites. There are photographs of people, places and
events from every stage of his life.
And then there are his friends, so many of them, and from all age groups and walks of life. So
many that The Jamie Fund was launched shortly after his death by the community with all
money raised going to the improvement of facilities for young people in and around
Carrbridge, as do all the proceeds from this self-published book.
Eleven years is not a long time, but Jamie lived his short life to the full, filling very minute. It
was a life cut short, yes, but not lived in vain as his father has demonstrated in this moving,
uplifting and unforgettable celebration.
© Margaret Graeme
[Reproduced in full with the kind permission of the reviewer and Scots Magazine} Back to top