A tale of two tweets, this week. The first is from Salisbury MP John Glen, writing in glowing terms about how well the country is doing. ‘Businesses are the backbone of our economy,’ he writes, ‘in challenging times they’ve shown enormous resilience and creativity, like so many of those I’ve visited in Salisbury.

Great news that the highest number of businesses were incorporated in Q1 this year since records began.’

The second is from Salisbury’s independent children’s bookstore, the Rocketship Bookshop: ‘THE ROCKETSHIP NEEDS YOUR HELP! Due to continuing construction work on our street, we are experiencing unprecedented financial challenges.’

Salisbury Journal: Inside Rocketship Bookshop on Bridge Street Image: Newsquest

The store has launched a RocketshipMayDay promotion until May 6th in the hope of encouraging customers to support their business.

The Rocketship Bookshop sits on Bridge Street, at the top of Fisherton Street. It’s a site with literary pedigree having housed another fondly remembered independent, The Everyman Bookshop from the 1970s to the 1990s.

Since last August, Fisherton Street has been on the receiving end of ongoing works for the Fisherton Gateway Project.

The scheme has massively hit businesses on the street, with some down by 50 per cent. ‘Never seen chaos like it,’ one owner told the Journal last month.

It’s currently overrunning by at least six weeks, with a gas leak at the station end just to add additional chaos into the mix.

With building work going on at the same time around the bookshop, walking along the pavement is proving as tricky as driving on the road.

And that’s without the building vans parked outside, making the shop all but invisible. Getting a pushchair into the shop to buy your children a book is easier said than done.

With unfortunate timing, the shop launched in early 2020, just before the pandemic hit.

It survived that and the subsequent cost of living crisis, but this latest challenge is third time unlucky.

For all John Glen’s boasting about business success (the records broken only began, by the way, in 2012) the reality for many retailers is somewhat different.

According to the Centre for Retail Research 119,405 jobs and 10,494 shops were lost in 2023.

And while the number of independent bookshops had been on the rise in recent years, last year saw the first fall since 2016, with sixty stores closing their doors.

Now. Bookshops are a good thing for all sorts of reasons. Independent shops are a good thing too: they’re what help give a place its uniqueness and identity.

It follows, therefore, that independent bookshops are a particularly good thing to be cherished and championed.

The Rocketship Bookshop is run by passionate booksellers who really know their stuff. If you believe in books and in buying local, please support!