Asks Ketta-see on the record-post 16.


I reckon, judging from my experience of sandy beaches, that they were getting scarce back in 1987, when I started living in Ramsgate. Seems li-los,inflatables & blankets have taken over.

But as to why they went-well,just the passing of time, found new uses in pensioner's back gardens, transferred to a park near you. That's what I thought.

However, 2 months ago, I got Les Vacances De M. Hulot on DVD-this is the very original French print & includes Aimee Barelli et son orchestre's glorious soundtrack, and only ONE English-voiced vacationer. This was the BFI issue and guess what WAS missing?

YES-the deckchair sequence!

So, how did deckchairs become politically incorrect? It can't be they are quintisentially English or British, otherwise they would never have been in Hulot in the first place.

It's unlikely they've upset Muslims. I haven't seen lots of Pakistanis jumping up and down with placards about Jacques Tati, nor burning deckchairs or even effigies of deckchairs, if they can't afford the real things.

Deckchairs are also famous in political circles. Famous, that is, for their complete lack of interest in politics and the fact that their voting record in general elections over the last 100 years has been abysmal. Don't forget they are not statutorily barred from voting, as are peers,lunatics or felons, or any combination thereof. So, they haven't upset Tony,either.

Right, there's just ONE possibility left. Must be that more people than Mimi & J or Roger witnessed beach spankings of high-spirited kids by irate, boiling parents.

Maybe most of the "more" received one,too! Over the parent's knee, parent on deckchair, what would you first associate with adult bad memories of the painful, probable bare-bottom spanking but the gaudily-striped deckchair silently grinning at you?

Once these chastised children grew up, they all became town council planning & leisure officers, or lifelong learning/development as it's termed here in Plymouth! And once they climbed enough spine points on the pay scales, the deckchair was a dead duck.

So now, Ketta, we need to ascertain where the unfortunate wooden exiles were sent. There must be a local government equivalent of the Gulag archipeligo. And, if we think revenge is a dish best tasted cold,it would be somewhere as far away from the seaside as one can find in GB.

As I didn't do Geography O level, I must guess Birmingham/Cannock Moor/just above Dingwall at the bottom of Caithness/Brecon Beacons/I don't know Ireland that well.

Your theories on where they all are will be welcomed, and I'm sure as entertaining as I trust this post, your starter for ten, is.


Steve M

I dived down to the Titanic the other week and they're all shuffling around down there.

I am fortunate enough to live in Brighton and can assure readers that there are many deckchairs available without charge on the Pier.

I would be delighted to give members a guided tour of this wonderful city, followed by tea and cakes at Hove Lagoon.

Isn't this a bit off-topic? You couldn't possibly cane somebody bending over a deckchair.

I was in Brighton on Sep 11th as it was the annual bikers' pilgrimage from the Ace Cafe on the North Circular. There were no deckchairs anywhere and as usual we had to sit on the floor to eat our chips. Perhaps the deckchairs were removed before the Ace week-end in case they were thrown into the sea? This sort of behaviour did exist in the 60s but nowadays bikers are very respectable people and don't do that. Here is a shot of some of my friends enjoying their chips on the pier.
The traditional deckchair is not allowed on the beach because it would contravene the Disability Discrimination Act.

J

ALAN

Yes indeed, but we have had previous witness reports of 50/60's mites being spanked at the seaside, often by Mum or Dad seated on the deckchair.

This with the little horror over their knee, and swimming trunks or bikini briefs frequently round knees or ankles.

It might not be happening very much now, if at all, but it did once & is part of our valuable CP archive/old codgers winge for return of good old days page, as you prefer.


Steve M

Dads in deckchairs, knotted hankies on heads, rolled up trousers spanking their unruly mites,

Often in perfect time to the beat from the bandstand, heaps of encouragement for dad from Mr Punch shouting “That’s the way to do it”

Steve:
May be you should have gone over dad knee “bikini briefs frequently round knees or ankles”

which 50’s/60’s kids wore bikini’s or was that something else I missed out on.

I think that swimming costumes for young girls in the 50s and 60s were one piece, so for spanking the costume would have been pulled up not down to expose the cheeks.

Can Ketta confirm?

KETTA

From my recollections, a lot of girls in those days wore shorts over knickers on the beach, so in fact my fevered imagination was down the road apiece!

I never got to see one live on the beach, but I think the band setting the rhythm was a bit better class resort than I went to;more Clacton than Walton-On-The-Naze, which is what we had to endure, though it did have those roll the wooden balls up the slope and into numbered rings machines on the pier & I was never short of rock!

Mr Punch-now, someone missed a trick there;an enterprising puppeteer could have got all parents doing it, too, on the principle that ruled in those days(did it in your school and house?)-get whacked for something you neither did nor were even planning to do, and get told "Well, that's for the next time and you aren't discovered!" And, so when you reminded the relevant authority figure the next time, you got more because"I clearly didn't teach you a proper lesson last time, then, did I?"


Steve M

Alan
“Isn't this a bit off-topic? You couldn't possibly cane somebody bending over a deckchair.”

Has anyone tried? someone…somewhere…….

But guarantee any off topic will eventually bring itself round to a connection with what this forum is all about

Daily Record, Glasgow, UK, 20 July 1965

Teenagers in holiday row
Birch Them! Sentence on Four Scots

(extract)
By Bill Robertson

FOUR 19-year-old Glasgow youths were yesterday BIRCHED on the orders of an Isle of Man magistrate.
The four, all on holiday at Douglas, were each given nine strokes on their bare buttocks.

The "sentence" followed a promenade battle in which bottles and a deck-chair were used as weapons. Three other holidaymakers were hurt, the jaw of one was broken.


J
Despite John’s claim of many deckchairs on the pier September this year I only found a few miserable specimens 12 at the most stacked up on the pier by a kiosk.

guided tours please John


“The traditional deckchair is not allowed on the beach because it would contravene the Disability Discrimination Act.”

Trouble with discrimination is you please one party, upset another if you can take a wheelchair on a beach why not a deckchair ?

No such problem in Eastbourne where the return of the deckchair looks set for a comeback

2005 Eastbourne Borough Council
"The 'Wide Boy' deckchair - 'made for the loving couple, when two chairs are just too far apart' - hit the headlines in 2005 and since then interest in the traditional English seaside deckchair is reported to have been so great that a smaller version for youngsters has been introduced. “


Steve
Now there’s a novel double deckchairs spankings, unruly siblings spanked by mum and dad simultaneously.

Replacement of the nylon v canvas variety. repetitive action causing a nasty build up of static shock.

C.C Mr Sewell (alias Mr Punch) nasty habit of clipping unsuspecting innocents across the back of the head, one lad clipped daring to ask what that was for, having sat innocently all lesson, “For asking me that stupid question” then gets another for being cheeky.

Ping
Yes our photo album shows clearly me subjected to wearing the all in one costume common in the 60’s. My elder brother can also be seen parading the beach in the all in one, common for boys up to late 50’s. So yes it would have been a case of pull up rather then down.

Some of our missing deckchairs certainly didn't end up in Croatia, this chap would be well advised to use the canvas variety

Deckchair trapped testicles

A Croatian man got quite a surprise when he tried to get out of his deck chair and realised he couldn't because his testicles were stuck.

The man Mario Visnjic had gone swimming naked in the sea at the Valalta beach in western Croatia, reports 24sata

His testicles had shrunk while he was in the cool sea and slipped through the wooden slats when he sat back down on his wooden deckchair.

But as he lay in the sun for some time they expanded back to their normal size and got stuck between the narrow strips of wood.

He was eventually freed after he called beach maintenance services on his mobile phone and they sent a staff member to cut the deck chair in half.