Hey, Mr Big! - scenes from a short but busy life (2)
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"I picked up the Strathy for a browse before setting out. And there to my surprise was a photograph of you on page two! Taken on the evening of your sponsored walk and barbeque with the Scouts at Loch an Eilein." |
"A mere twenty four hours later, I was sitting in a car on the drive
talking to a pair of freelance journalists for the Sunday Papers ...
Indoors, the Strathy was lying out on the table where I'd left it the day before, still open to the picture on page two, waiting for you to come home."
"I spoke to them about the things you loved to do. About stories and make-believe and about how every corner of the garden was a reminder of all the things that you and I had been doing together that first week of the holidays." |
A gate to the woods and to make believe |
"The one thing I can never know, Jamie Man, is how you would have
told this story in your summer holiday diary. How you might have
dealt with nosey journalists and rescue teams and policewomen
and doctors and everything else that was to follow?"
Landmark 1995 | "It's difficult to avoid the feeling now, that in the course of those final, few days, some strange instinct led you to revisit every single place that had come to be special or important to you in one way or another: in the house, in the garden, around the village, in the woods." |
Landmark 1995 |
"Whenever Jamie was asked what he wanted to do when he grew up
there was never a moment's doubt or hesitation in his response
- he was going to be an animator like Nick Park."
We were planning to record our progress over the summer in pictures | "You were so desperately keen to be here when [the man from the Folk Museum] came to inspect our very-own, home-made archaeological mystery.
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"Oh, God, sometimes it really feels like I'm simply waiting for you to walk in through the door again, full of news after a trip away ... All I want to do is take you in my arms and welcome you home. Is that so very much to ask?"
New Year 2003 | "What happens to all that fun when it isn't being used? Does it have somewhere else to go? Or does it simply melt away into nothing?" |
Wow! photo by Janet Simpson |
"The thing that turns each and every child into an individual, is
that unpredictable spark - the "Wrong Trousers" train of thought
that lays its own tracks as it goes along, and isn't averse to leaping off
up some unexpected sideline whenever the fancy takes it."
"After everyone else had gone to bed, I wrote my letter to Nick Park to say thank you for all the fun that Aardman had brought you over the years ... I doubted it would even reach him. Nevertheless, it seemed an important thing to do at that particular moment." |
Aardman/W&G Ltd 1989/Courtesy of The Art Group |
"No, I don't know how you would have told this story.
But I do know that you would have found a place for the joy
and the smiling, as well as the sadnesses."
"Three Scout uniforms along either side. I'm standing at your feet. Kyle is at your head. We take up the cords and together we lower you to a place of final rest." |
| "The conversation dies away and the hall grows quiet and empty. What then? What do you do with the rest of the day when the funeral is over? Do you? - can you? - ever go home?" |
"When I look back on the eleven years I was privileged to share with you,
my Jamie Man, I find that it's the small incidents - the trivial, the odd,
the crazy - that spring most readily to mind. These are in every sense the bitter-sweet memories. Carrying with them the most joy and at the same
time the most pain. When the tears flow and the waves of sorrow roll over
me for the times ahead that should have been and now can never be."
"Jamie taught me that: « Imagination is the toyshop of the mind « A small person may be someone who is on the way to growing big inside « Holding hands is a lot more than not letting go « Once hugged, never forgotten" |
Trekking with Carr-Bridge Playgroup 1993/94 |
"I opened up my heart to my children. There were choices.
And when it came to weighing up what really mattered, it seemed to me
that the most valuable gift I had to offer was my time."
| "As I stood at that spot, high above the waters, a solitary bird suddenly swept in from above, with its plaintive, mewing cry like the sound of a young cat. Then, rising once more, it was joined by a second, and a third ..." |
| "Until finally I watched as five young buzzards swooped and chased one another around the sky.
Like primary children at play. High above the hard and unforgiving rocks of a Highland gorge." |
"But I don't want to talk any more about the Falls of Bruar.
I have had my time of telling everyone our story.
The rest is a tale that is yours and mine to keep, Jamie Man."
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