I'm so sad that Salisbury is losing the India Shop

THE saddest yet, to me, of the many sad shop closures blighting Salisbury is that of the India Shop in the High Street.

This is one of the city’s few, truly different and interesting places to browse for gifts, homewares and small, unique pieces of furniture.

It’s one of the best of the steadily diminishing “quirky independent” brigade that Wiltshire Council’s consultants are always enthusing about as being key to Salisbury’s future as a retail centre. 

And over the years I’ve probably spent a small fortune in there.

I popped in yesterday and I kid you not, I could see how glum all my fellow-customers were underneath their Covid masks.

The ones I spoke to all said pretty much the same: “Oh, what a shame. This is the one shop that makes coming into Salisbury worth it.”

I don’t quite agree – there are three or four more I’d make the effort for, but that’s all, these days. 

Then again, I think this was just people’s way of saying how fed up they were.

Fortunately, the company’s Honeystreet warehouse out Pewsey way is remaining open, so devotees will be able to trail out there for their Eastern fix.

But that’s not the point, really, is it?

The point is what’s happening to Salisbury.

Sure, retail experts have been saying for ages now that the pandemic has only hastened the inevitable, given the inexorable rise of online shopping. And that high streets have got to adapt to survive.

But how can they? How many cups of coffee can we drink?How many identikit chain restaurant meals can we eat till even the money-off vouchers lose their allure?

And what’s the point? We can’t just sit and stuff our faces and gaze vacantly around at hundreds of other people all doing the same thing, then retreat to our computer screens at home to ‘one click’ everything else we need because it’s cheaper from some giant warehouse where workers are treated like dirt. 

Do you think we will still be offered genuine consumer choice if we allow that to happen? If control over what’s on offer is concentrated in just a handful of hands, greedy for economies of scale?

I hate it when I hear people say: “Soon there won’t be any point in coming into town.”

It’s about more than shopping. It’s about what sustains a community.