SOMETIMES it feels like the death by a thousand cuts as, one by one, slowly but seemingly unstoppably, another Dales village institution dies. Last month it was the people of Gargrave who were mourning the loss of a shop, which had served the village for more than a century. Whose turn will it be next week?

In some ways the closure of The Village Store, on Gargrave High Street, is not really news: such events have been going on for so long now that they do not rate as "new." But to retiring owners, Brian and Janet Pawson, it was an event of real sadness.

Not that it was their fault. Brian, at 64, and Janet, 61, have earned the right for a happy retirement after a working lifetime in the retail trade. They tried to find buyers for a business founded in 1898 - but no one came forward.

"We are sad about leaving and sad that the shop is closing," Janet told the Herald.

Time was when a sound little business in a thriving Craven community would have had people queuing up to buy. It was the dream of thousands, perhaps millions, of people yearning to leave rat-race jobs amongst the clamour and pollution of the big towns and cities.

No more. It would appear that to today's would-be entrepreneurs, a village shop entails too much work, hours that are too long and rewards which are too meagre. Even rural post offices, once the golden geese of small business, have stopped laying because the Government changed the rules on how people should be paid pensions and other benefits.

Some, like the sub-post office and shop in Lothersdale, closed because of ill health with no buyer in sight. In Bradley, Ted Germaine closed down his sub-post office and turned it into a private house because he became tired of post office bureaucracy. However, a post office facility later reopened in the nearby village store.

But the most telling reason for the closure of village shops is the fault of us, the general public. The once-a-week trip to the big supermarkets for a one-stop-grocery shop has made it virtually impossible for many small shops to make a reasonable profit - and that includes outlets in towns like Skipton.

In the bigger communities, such closures are an inconvenience. In tiny villages, they can be little short of a disaster, particularly for old folk and those unable to meet or maintain the soaring costs of car ownership.

This, again, is not news: the Government, Whitehall mandarins, local councils, quangos and dozens of rural voluntary organisations have been demanding solutions for at least a decade. But although some measures have been taken - like cuts in business rates and attempts to open banks in rural post offices - the situation seems to get worse.

The question now is: can the small rural shop even survive? And the answer is "yes" according to Colin Laverick, owner of the tiny, one-room sub-post office opposite the parish church in Giggleswick. But there are provisos.

"Anyone who thinks running a small village shop and post office is a sinecure is very much mistaken," says Colin, 64, who bought the shop five years ago after a life in heavy industry and then as a training executive. "I have never worked so hard, both physically and mentally, in my whole life."

Colin, an old boy of Ermysted's Grammar School in Skipton, who moved away and then returned to Craven, says that running a village shop demands exactly the same considerations as running a super store in a city: location and customer satisfaction.

"Some people take village shops thinking they have a captive audience," he says. "That may be true of a very small number of the local population but not enough to keep a shop in business - very few people come here to do their weekly grocery shop. But I am lucky because I have Giggleswick School just up the road and in term-time, boys from the school make up 70 per cent of my trade. Without them, this business would not exist - that's how important location is. But if you have the right spot, you must also keep the right stock."

I looked round the shelves. He had all the emergency things you and I forget to buy at the supermarket - candles and toilet rolls, greetings cards and tissues - but also a gourmet selection of rice, pasta, noodles and Oriental sauces to go with them.

"The boys up at the school like to cook for themselves from time to time, particularly at the weekend," says widower Colin, who runs the shop with two part-time assistants. "They like some pretty exotic dishes so, if they want something, I will get it in for them."

He makes it sound easy but, to make a profit, Colin opens seven days a week in term time. When the school is on holiday, he allows himself Saturday afternoon and Sunday off.

"I get by financially but I never thought I would make a fortune when I came here," he explains. "I live in beautiful countryside and am treated as quite an important person in a wonderful, closer-knit community. There is more to life than just money."

Also on the good news front, the village shop has an important ally in former Yorkshire Dales National Park chief executive Heather Hancock, who is now the director in charge of rural affairs at Yorkshire Forward, the Government-funded regional development agency.

Heather, who still lives near Arncliffe, believes that village shops "play a vital role within the rural community"

She told the Herald: "Within the Yorkshire and Humber region we are in the process of working up proposals with the Countryside Agency to ensure that services like the village shop which provide a focal point within the community are retained as part of the overall characteristics required to deliver a step change in economic rural regeneration."

Perhaps there is life in the village shop yet...