Thanks for the good wishes. I need the encouragement.
SGB, Totnes is becoming "every day I love you less and less," but that might just be grief. The bookshops are almost all gone, but may be making a come back. The last years of my working life I worked in Harlequin, the second-hand and remaindered bookshop opposite the market square. It is now no more. Pedlar's Pack at the bottom of Fore Street closed years ago, the second hand shop where the owner sat reading all day died when his wife passed on tragically, the Totnes Bookshop owned by Dartington Estates has been shrinking into obscurity for years and may not ever re-open IMO, Bell Book and Candle's owner died and it is now kept alive by volunteers as a community bookshop. On the positive side a new independent shop opened on Eastgate during the pandemic that looks more than promising, and we do have an Oxfam bookshop that is well-stocked and well-run, but has spent the last year largely closed of course. The trouble with Totnes is that it is a long way up its own bottom and lost a lots of its attraction when Dartington College of Arts combined with Falmouth College and left the town to become a forgotten part of the University of Cornwall. The place isn't sure whether to be a working town or another kind of Salcombe. Now where else can you get news of Totnes? (You do realise we were probably part of the same school choir, when I was too junior a boy even to have spoken to you!)
The Mark Twain comment is so true ....... in my case anyway.
SGB, Totnes is becoming "every day I love you less and less," but that might just be grief. The bookshops are almost all gone, but may be making a come back. The last years of my working life I worked in Harlequin, the second-hand and remaindered bookshop opposite the market square. It is now no more. Pedlar's Pack at the bottom of Fore Street closed years ago, the second hand shop where the owner sat reading all day died when his wife passed on tragically, the Totnes Bookshop owned by Dartington Estates has been shrinking into obscurity for years and may not ever re-open IMO, Bell Book and Candle's owner died and it is now kept alive by volunteers as a community bookshop. On the positive side a new independent shop opened on Eastgate during the pandemic that looks more than promising, and we do have an Oxfam bookshop that is well-stocked and well-run, but has spent the last year largely closed of course. The trouble with Totnes is that it is a long way up its own bottom and lost a lots of its attraction when Dartington College of Arts combined with Falmouth College and left the town to become a forgotten part of the University of Cornwall. The place isn't sure whether to be a working town or another kind of Salcombe. Now where else can you get news of Totnes? (You do realise we were probably part of the same school choir, when I was too junior a boy even to have spoken to you!)
The Mark Twain comment is so true ....... in my case anyway.