I HAVE always liked optimists, particularly the ones who have suffered a few sharp dips on life's rollercoaster. The aptly named Jim Hope is one of these and, God bless 'im, he manages to share that optimism with other people.

To be frank, I was not looking forward to meeting him on a miserable, drizzly morning. I mean, he runs a Christian book shop and I was expecting a pretty dull couple of hours surrounded by dusty, leather-bound tomes and hand-stitched Psalters with worthy exhortations from the Bible urging me to live a better life.

Now I admit quite freely that I could live a better life - couldn't we all? - but I was in no mood to be lectured about it. An hour or so later, I emerged from the backdoor of the Cornerstone book shop in Newmarket Street, Skipton, happy, smiling and not a little enlightened - despite the continuing gloom.

For a start, this is a shop full of colour, with shelves full of gaily-covered books, walls hung with interesting pictures (I didn't see a solitary crucifixion), CDs and comic-book bibles in the big section devoted to introducing children to the mysteries of the bible.

Then there is a sense of humour at work. One of the aforesaid children's books was entitled Boring Bible, and that it certainly wasn't (there are some pretty cool tales in the Good Book).

Another, for adults, has a cover designed like an optician's test card with each line of type getting smaller and smaller so that I had to stoop to read it all: "God is not what you think".

Finally, there is Jim himself, who runs Cornerstone as an almost full-time part-timer with Gill Pemberton, and enthuses you in a way which is both cheerful and thought provoking. He makes you laugh.

All this helps to explain why, a couple of months ago, Cornerstone was voted the best small Christian book seller in Britain in a nationwide competition involving some 400 stores big and small.

Life was not always so happy for Jim Hope, a farmer's lad from Cumbria who, from grammar school in Penrith, had gone on to become a college lecturer in agriculture. He arrived in Skipton in 1981 with what he thought was a plum job as head of the agricultural department at Craven College.

For almost a decade life was pretty sweet. His wife, Eileen, a speech therapist, got a job helping children with special needs and their two children began to grow up.

However, Margaret Thatcher was determined to revolutionise state education and one of the first moves was to take further education colleges out of the control of local authorities and cast them adrift on their own.

"It was an enormous shake-up to the system," recalls Jim, quietly but without rancour. "To survive, colleges had to attract more and more students. Agriculture studies were becoming less and less important as the syllabus was expanded.

"For a short time I became a manager rather than a teacher, which I didn't like very much, and then quite a few of we managers were made redundant. I can't say that I was surprised - we had been expecting the worst - but it still came as a shock to the system after almost 20 years in the profession."

Jim describes himself as a "cradle Methodist" and he and his wife had been active church members for years - he was and still is a lay preacher at Trinity Methodist Church in Westmoreland Street, Skipton. So did his faith help him through such a crisis?

"Oh yes," he reflects. "I am an optimistic person anyway but I know that God is always there in the background. At the time, for me it was almost a relief - I was glad to be out of the college.

"My main worry, however, was that Eileen had become the family bread-winner and that put her under a lot of stress. I got a 'hands-dirty' job as a helper with a company in East Marton where we live and thoroughly enjoyed myself for a few years."

By this time, he and a group of fellow Christians had begun to be concerned that there was no Christian bookshop in Skipton - for that sort of literature, you had to travel to Bradford or Kendal. So after a trial run at Christmas 1992 - which showed there was a market - they opened the present store in a former terraced cottage in November 1993.

"I hope we can make it clear that this is a fully commercial enterprise, not a loss-making operation heavily subsidised by local churches," says Jim. "But I have to admit that, when we started, there were more than a few people who thought we were mad.

"The media has been full of reports of falling church attendances for years. In fact, the churches here in Skipton have vibrant, active and enthusiastic congregations.

"What's more, there is a huge reservoir of spirituality among people who are not regular church-goers but still hold on fiercely to their Christian beliefs. I think this shop proves that. We make profits every year - and Marks and Spencer or even Tesco would envy our turnover growth."

Cornerstone recently added a small coffee shop to the back of the store. I can recommend it as a good place to drop in, browse a stunning variety of books and other goods and perhaps think of things we tend to push aside these days.

The coffee's good too, so I'm told - the place gets so busy I had to meet Jim Hope before opening time although he did volunteer to make one just for me. Coffee-less I may have been but there was a distinct lightness to my step as I walked out once more into the drizzle.