Folk Wisdom

Candlestub Clem sat on a chair in church next to the candle stand where he’d just lit a light for his poorly sister. ‘You know me, Father, you know I’m an alcoholic and all that, and yeah, I never went to university, but I lived in Cambridge for twenty years, and you spend all that time somewhere like that, and stuff has to rub off on you a bit, hasn’t it? If you keep your eyes and ears open. My gran used to say to me, take the cotton wool out of your ears and put it in your gob, and you might learn something. I talk to people about apartheid and stuff, and they don’t know who Steve Biko was. How can you not know about Steve Biko? I could tell you his cell number. People just don’t know, they don’t pay attention. It’s a crazy world we live in, it really is.’