Deck Chairs, by Steve Harrison

Picture  two striped Deck Chairs

The canvas of the deck chairs had started to stiffen in the cold air and as there would be little call for them in this weather, Bert’s self-allocated job would to be to keep warm, with only one eye needed for the more hardened intrepid punters.

Between hand cupped secret draws on a stealthy cigarette he had time to examine and appreciate the deceptively simple design. Two pivots, one piece of canvas, nine pieces of 2 by 1 timber. He knew his deck chairs.

When autumn came; never stack away wet, grease on the bolts, oil on the wood, moth balls between every five chairs and the stains of summer; of beer, baccky and babies; could always be wiped or blancoed out.

He knew his punters too: who would be baffled by the mechanisms, who would expect it to be assembled and, on an insightful day, he could predict a low, high or medium seating setting .

Folding chairs had been found in Egyptian tombs, but these were the apex of  design  a classic flat pack to the seasons. Just a couple of inches thick when folded they could be stored by tennis courts , cricket fields , in wooden huts on piers and promenades, below band stand  and pavilions, a striped flag to the English summer.

A seasonal banner that spring had come, to open up like canvas butterflies after winters hibernating in creosoted sheds, stacked carefully behind rollers and tennis nets, another summer to spread out and celebrate if the moths hadn’t got in there.

It was all in the preparation; no food, no vermin, no rain no rot, with care no creaks, deck chairs were easy to please.

What a life ! A cosy winter packed tighter than horizontal penguins; then beaches, piers and sporting occasions, the occasional cruise.

He remembered trying to unfold and erect his first one, when chair and stacker were the same height and getting trapped between the canvas jaws. And then the success of the back bar fitting into the serrated teeth, smugly sitting in it, front bar under his knees, scuffed shoes and half-mast socks just dangling like swinging conkers, legs not yet long enough to touch the floor.

A rite of passage from his boyhood, like the first solo bicycle repair puncture when his thumbs were strong enough to replace the tyre over the rim without his father’s help, and the conspirator winks between them after smuggling forks as tyre levers.

The smell of his own cigarette fumed it back, enamel bowls to be sneaked out of kitchens to find the holes , given away by the smallest bubbles from hedgerow punctures, but always look for another one just in case.

He sighed the final drag on the twice used cigarette.

But it was now a chilly evening: his nose smelt that ice was in the air. To keep warm he decided to stack and re arrange the deck chairs.

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