Mr Pickwick's

Opportunity is the theme in this week’s photo challenge…as described, the opportunity that presents itself where your reaction is either of the ‘…wish I brought the camera…’ or ‘…naturally, I had the camera (and after I finished my reps)…’ variety…

We’ve long been in the habit of always having a camera handy – and keeping it bombed up with fresh batteries: no more rechargeables for the camera, just good old fashioned, environmentally-unfriendly lithiums for us – and so don’t have too many of those ‘…and I there was, the Yeti poised in front of me, when the flat battery alarm frightened it off…’ stories…with animals and small children here, there are too many opportunities too good to miss…

So for us, perhaps, opportunity and cameras go together in a different way…we love nothing more than to have the time when travelling to stop in some little place and spend an hour or two exploring some pokey (the pokier the better) antique or secondhand (often the distinction between the two is in the eye of the beholder) shop and we use to camera to record objet d’intereste, sometimes just for curiosity, sometimes to compare with another, and sometimes just as a memory-jogger as to where what was seen if we decide to go back for it…

We last visited Mr Pickwick’s in Christchurch over Christmas/New Year 09-10 – at the time they were unloading a lot of stock in preparation for moving to a new smaller location in order to better compete with the new business model coming from entities like TradeMe …they used to be along Cashel Street in Sydenham, about halfway between the now Red Zone and the foot of the Port Hills…hope that move went well for them and that few treasures were damaged or lost in the September and February quakes…