The Elves, the Shoemaker, Colonialism and Fair Trade
Had a fairly surreal evening putting the kids to bed this evening. They were given a choice of a Paddington book (often a favourite) or one of ‘granny’s stories’ (the selection of 40 year old Ladybird books my mother in law has kept which are classic stories representing the oppressive and often shocking ideals of the 19th and early 20th centuries). The children chose the latter and selected’The Elves and The Shoemaker’. ‘This was one of my favourite books as a child’, I told them anticipating another much loved tale not bearing up under the scrutiny of time. It felt quite surreal reading the book as it almost felt like the words resonated with a verbatim memory I had of it. This was even more strange given that I had completely forgotten the plot. Spoiler alert! The story tells the tale of a couple (shoemakers) living in poverty, they are at the end of their rope and mysteriously get helped by some unknown benevolent force that lifts them out of poverty. They stay up one evening an