I have many friends in Ghana, but when a stay becomes extended like this one I miss Nadira, Jamie, Emily and Cameron dreadfully.
When I was about 8 years old and living in a bungalow at Beeston Regis with my mum and brothers and sister, we had one of the very few christmasses in my early childhood when my father was at home. We had a black and white TV and the big BBC film on Christmas Eve was “Calamity Jane” with Doris Day. My parents and especially grandparents were quite excited about this and had been talking about it all day.
We had eaten our tea, the children sat on the floor with our Corona pop and the adults sat behind with their Guinness or Mackeson, sherry or whisky as we focussed on the small television.
We had placed pillowcases around the christmas tree. I decided that I was so excited about Christmas that I wanted to go to bed early so it would come quickly. I thought as my dad was home I would get a really good present (I did. I got a bike. It wasn’t new, but my grandad got a tin of silver spray paint from Woolworths and sprayed it. I thought it looked new. I couldn’t touch the pedals at the bottom of their rotation. I rode that bike until my knees scarcely unbent as the pedals turned).
I left the party, though everyone told me it was a really good film. Of course, I didn’t sleep. I lay in my bunk bed staring out at the stars and listening to all the songs from Calamity Jane through the wall, with various family members singing along.
I never did see Calamity Jane, until last night when it came on satellite TV in Accra. Then, in the dark of an African night, in a small house alone in a big compound, through the one lit window a stupid old white man sat, with tears streaming down his face, sobbing out loud for all that was lost, for every hurtful word he had said to those who were gone, and for all the good he had not done.
Wish I could give you a hug.
You are not old: my best friend was 96, and was still not old. You are not stupid, unless to be informed, brave, curious and incisive is to be stupid these days. And you seem to be more of a nice pink colour, to me.
It’s impossible to do everything right, I hope, but you are very warmly thought of across the world for good reason. (I expect you would have made an excellent gardener, but life had other plans.) I am sure you have always done your best, which my mother says is all one can do. And I do hope you see your loving family very soon.
you can’t buy paint or anything else from woolworths. To bad Woolworths wasn’t a bank?
Anyway, I’ll give you the Old, White and Man, but I don’t think your thick, I don’t think they are that many thick people running Universities are they?
Ok, If you insist on keeping the stupid,
I’ll let you have the stupid, and the old, but your not the white. Being in Ghana for so long has probably made you a brown, or at least a red/orange/pink.
That bike was a really good present. I still remember presents made by my parents and they were the best and most special of all.
We all hurt people we love on occasion and none of us do all the good we would wish. All we can do is follow the advice from Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot: “Fail again. Fail better.”
I hope you enjoyed Calamity Jane. I also watched it on a black and white TV with my family – possibly at the same time as you missed it – and I still reckon it’s a really good film.
Honest. Human. Healthy. Such as is so rarely shared.
Speaking from Bus-pass and (my first) winter fuel allowance territory, I know I am my own harshest judge. Yet unless omniscient, we do not have the measure of the value of our own lives. It takes the love of others to remind us of that.
“a stupid old white man” … and you’re forgetful. You forgot: brave, honest, principled, inspiring, self-aware, highly intelligent (not the same as stupid, btw, at least not in modern parlance), brave, literate, fun (by the sound of it 😉 ), caring, brave (did I mention brave?).
And much more besides, including, as has been said avove – human, i.e. imperfect. May we be preserved from the self-righteous who think they’re perfect.
Don’t beat yourself up too much.
You regret your errors, but the people you struggle against do not; they lack your faculty of self-perception. Enjoy your tears – they’re why you’re worthwhile. Anyone who can look at this world without weeping is sadder than tears can show.
As someone who wept through the first walt Disneys 101 Dalmatians when it first came out, I can feel for your emotions, since those pre pubescent days it was only ‘one flew over cuckoo;s nest that got anywhere close to getting my hanky wet.
I hope you can get back in time for the yule holidays and see your family.
This post is what makes you more than all the sums of other blogs, humnanity is just too precious to be forgotten or discouraged by some formal notions of etikette.
Cheer up Craig. Accra should be a place full of better memories….
That made my eyes well up. So sad. You are not old Craig. You have done an amazing amount of good. Take heart and I hope you will be back with your loved ones for Christmas, Cameron’s first.
I came across your name in this article on Global Research about an American Indian called Splitting the Sky, made in your mould.
‘The purpose of the Anglo-American resort to torture has recently been described by Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, who has become a whistle blower exposing the underlying fraud of the global war on terror. Murray was removed from his job when he began to pay attention to what was happening in his posting to prisoners flown in through illegal renditions from many parts of the world.
Here is how Murray describes the patterns of torture in Uzbekistan, a key polity in the region’s multi-trillion dollar political boondoggle of oil and gas extraction, as well as pipeline construction. Murray asserts,
“The whole point of the intelligence being obtained under torture was to actually exaggerate the terrorist threats and to exaggerate the strength of Al-Qaeda. That was the whole point of why people were being tortured, to confess that they were members of Al-Qaeda and to denounce long lists of names of people as members of Al-Qaeda who weren’t members of Al-Qaeda.”
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16377
Back in Blighty… They screened ET. I had to leave the room.. something in my eye…
You’ve done some good in the world; as we get older it is right to live and leave with more kindness.
Stop feeling sorry craig remember the family that loves you and misses you we are all proud of you and if dad was still alive he would be proud but he would still call you his stupid boy. We have all got regrets from past actions or inactions.
You have done us all proud.If it wasnt for you some people would not be here today or would have been hideously tortured.Not many people can say they have made a difference. Ghana having a democracy is a huge achievement people who knock you or smear you are either jealous or trying to protect something.
In dads words dont let the bastards grind you down.
Chin up Craig go to the pub have a whisky. Nadira an Cameron are fine. Finish your business and get home I will nip down woolies for the spray paint and we can watch Calamity Jane on your 52inch HD plasma. It will beat the dodgy black and white TV we had then that you had to bang every now and then to stop it rolling. In the immortal words of Del Boy this time next year bro we will be millionares!
You’re such a nice person. How many people think about what good they haven’t done?
Ye Gods Craig you’re a bore when you get depressed.
I have been proud to call you a friend for thirty years now. I have never said this to you because I am not a poofter, but you are beyond any doubt the kindest man I have ever met. You may have some stupid ideas on how to do it sometimes, but god you are tediously well-meaning. Now get over yourself and go get pissed. Any more of this drivel and I shall kick your arse next time you’re in Glasgow.
I’m also a Non-Poof who likes Craig.
I could probably beat you too, because you are quite a small man(Not that I would, I’ll leave that to Adam because you might fight dirty).
As human beings go, Craig, you’re OK. You are intelligent, kind, and thoughtful. And you have given us all a shining example of physical and moral courage – perhaps the qualities that our civilisation needs most desperately.
You’re lucky the screen didn’t start rolling as it did in my b&w day.
I didn’t get a bike but I had some rare down to earth presents:
http://www.photopol.com/james_st/neddy_350.jpg
cardboard box, bit of string, wooden rocking horse. Paradise.
Days of innocence can get to you in later life. Don’t regret, enjoy.
Rath ar an obair.
Having speed read the first few chapters of Murder in Samarkand on my course, I cannot believe the sycophantic comments here
Craig Murray is a misogynist who is a serial sexual abuser of vunerable young women he is a simple criminal like Polandski
He gets sentimental about children he left for a stripper
He now makes a living attacking ministers in a government which really does try to help people and attacks Labour and “The left” and responsible organisations like Quilliam which seek to promote social cohesion
He has been a laughing stock candidate in the UK and now hopes to con Africans into accepting him
He has a crowd of homophobic followers and makes sexist and racist jokes
This website is a joke populated by nutballs racists fanatics and conspiracy theorists it will soon be closed down for libel
Or not, as the case may be.
Switched on to the Parliament channel and who should be giving evidence on Preventing Violent Extremism to the Communities and Local Government Committee was Ed Husain, co founder Quilliam Foundation. Very well and expensively dressed (hope that’s not libellous.
He said:
‘That cause, that narrative, that mood music, is something along the lines as follows: that the west is somehow at war with “Islam” and “Muslim” countries, that somehow we British Muslims do not belong here in Britain, that we are a fifth column community that is waiting for a caliph to arrive somewhere in the Middle East to which we will respond….’
For his information YES WE ARE AT WAR WITH ISLAM AND MUSLIM.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200910/cmselect/cmcomloc/uc65-i/uc6502.htm
Thanks to everyone for these lovely comments. Great to hear from Sief again. And thanks to Jane Peters for making me laugh, albeit accidentally. I know Mary means we are at war with Islam and shouldn’t be. it’s as well to remember that almost half the readers who read every post are first time visitors so you can’t take it they know where you’re coming from.
At least you know where we’re coming from, Craig, and you know you have tons of support.
Hope you get back to your family very soon.
Jane Peters,
I wonder what ‘course’ you are studying, and wether it is for helping people or personal gain. I’d put a large wager on the latter.
Maybe putting your money towards a few ‘courses’ in human decency may be in order, which you may learn if you actually read ‘Murder in Samarkand’ from start to finish, absorbing all the horror and political bullshit which goes to try cover up this horror. Or would you rather stand in line, keep your head down and remain silent in order to shuffle up whatever political pole you are trying to climb ?
Sometimes things just trigger us off.
One such occasion for me was while in Cuba, when I gave a pair of new shoes away to a fellow who was almost exactly my size, so I knew they’d fit. He thanked me as if I’d suddenly handed over my life’s savings.
This guy was a fully qualified physiotherapist, exceptionally well trained for medical practice all round, and he was giving massages to comfortably off western tourists (non-American). He was kind, serious, and competent far beyond the calling of this job.
And this professional, proud man was incredibly grateful that I had given him a pair of brand new shoes. He was earlier astonished that I tipped him $10. He talked with me, and we realised we had a lot of understanding of why things were as they are.
Looking now at a present he gave me before I left, which appears to be some inch-long bone shaped into a horn, attached rather stylishly with leather and string to make a pendant, I am overcome with shame, that we’ve allowed a tiny experimental revolution to be beaten and starved, because we had a ‘special relationship’ with its oppressor.
Who knows what Cuba might have become, had it been given the slightest chance. That is what the US fears more than anything else. Of course everything is not ideal about its government, but the resources seem to be directed towards people more than any bloated elite. Life expectancy, literacy rates, drug problems, imprisonment and crime – they are far better than we manage, even though Cuba has about 5% GDP of America.
If the US stopped its siege and terrorist actions, would Cuba’s government open up? Would it just succumb to capitalism and degenerate, like everywhere else? Would this proud, fine, intelligent and decent physician be so grateful for simply a pair of shoes in any fair system at all? What was I doing to assist, other than chosing Cuba for a holiday destination again, and writing to my MP once in a while?
Why is it that so many people can be doing the right thing, care about others, work so hard and yet be in poverty? Why should they be pathetically grateful for inconsequential items like shoes that we take utterly for granted? Why do my representatives either actively or passively contrive to uphold a system which is just so goddamned unfair?
*
These were thoughts that I kept at bay, so I wouldn’t start sobbing until I got to my room.
Who was Polandski?
Otherwise can’t quite see what’s wrong with Ed Husein’s stance, Mary, sorry. I don’t think we are really at war with Islam. I’m not, you’re not, most of the country aren’t. The UK government may have been suckered into supporting the US attacks on Afghanistan & Iraq, but that’s a different thing, surely.
I know, to my horror, that it can now feel that way, both to Muslims, and to the English Defence League. But years ago, when this meme was first promoted, it sounded quite ridiculous, didn’t it?
Craig wears his heart on his sleeve, and he is genuine and honest about it. This sentimentality is both a great weakness and a great strength.
Other people are not especially prone to sentimentality, but rely almost entirely on Kantian calculations according to principles and logic. They are devoid of soppiness and immune to temptation. But they lack passion and drive, and take a long time to work out the right direction.
Craig is much the stronger man. The personal qualities that make his moods ebb and flow, that make him follow his instincts and urges, wherever they may lead, are also the qualities that help him sense immediately the right thing to do, to empathise with those in distress and battle hard to help them.
It makes sense to look to Craig Murray as a moral and political compass. He uses his instincts to suss out a situation more quickly and reliably than anyone, and drives people in the right direction with verve and commitment. By the time other people have calculated the best thing to do, within circumspect parameters of uncertainty, Craig is already there, giving the bad guys what-for. So if he knows what he’s talking about more than you, then pack away your moral calculator and follow where he points.
Nice one, Craig.
And now for something completely different. Have you seen that you are quoted with approval here?
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16377
A quick comment for nextus.
Yes, Craig is strong, but never ignore your own moral compass, the more often you use it the more reliable it will become!!!