This is The Mainstreet Trading Company, a gem of a bookshop in the Borders village of St. Boswells. I mentioned it the other day in connection with Independent Booksellers' Week, but I hadn't seen it for myself then; now I have and I'm glad to say that not only did it live up to expectations, it surpassed them.
Light, bright and spacious, it has a superb range of stock including many, many Cornflower favourites (so a person of taste is obviously doing the choosing!), and I was served by Rosamund de la Hey herself who was very friendly and accommodating and who, having previously been children's marketing director at Bloomsbury, clearly knows her stuff.
We spent a while browsing and then had lunch in the café at the far end of the shop -
no pictures of that but good soup, excellent bread and wonderful coffee was there in abundance, and they had a very tempting selection of cakes, too.
The shop's smart pale grey bookmarks bear these words of Henry Ward Beecher's: "Where is human nature so weak as in the bookstore?"
Unlike some of our party, and because of the enormous piles waiting at home, I was quite strong, buying just the one book this time, but I can see that any future visits to the Borders will demand a return trip to enjoy more of what this lovely shop has to offer. Do go if ever you get the chance!
