The SFX Weekender 3
Monday, January 30, 2012
The Weekender is drawing nigh, and Pornokitsch is here to help!
We've journeyed down to Rye the last two years, but the Weekender is being held at a new location this year - Prestatyn, in Wales! Here are some exciting Prestatyn facts you may wow your roommates with:
- Prestatyn has been inhabited since prehistoric times. The Romans liked it, too; there's evidence that a Roman fort stood on the road from Chester to Caernarfon.
- Prestatyn's name is a Welsh corruption of an English corruption of the Anglo-Saxon words preosta (priest) and tun (farm). Priestfarm!
- Prestatyn was just a teeny fishing hamlet until the nineteenth century, when the Victorians got into sea-bathing and ran a railroad out to it. Apparently the Prestatyn beaches are very nice (in the summer)!
- Prestatyn was bombed during WWII - but not by the Germans! It was one of the few locations in the UK to be hit by the Italian Air Force!
- Philip Larkin once write a poem about Prestatyn! Gold star for anyone who memorizes at least a stanza before the Weekender.
- A bog mummy, known as "Prestatyn Child," was found in 1984, apparently nearby!
More tips, tricks, recaps & musings below...
First of all, our essentials packing guide! You can find our suggestions here.
To the list we'd like to add:
- Tea. You're going to want tea. So is everyone else. Whatever saleable tea-products are to be found near the Pontin's are going to be sold within minutes of your arrival, so definitely bring a big box of PG Tips.
- Paper towels. Or, if you're environmentally sound, tea-towels. But something with which you can wash dishes and wipe down surfaces.
- Bath towels. Even if you have the fancy-schmancy "linens included" package, you're going to be given a towel the size and approximate absorbancy of a tablet of asprin. Definitely bring your own.
And, of course, you'll want to read all about previous Weekenders!
Jared and I will be bounding around like kittens from Thursday afternoon on, so please feel free to rock up, introduce yourselves, and launch into an explanation about how incredibly wrong-headed we are about books/movies/Daleks/bacon. Jared will be hosting the panel "Elf Preservation," about magic in fantasy novels on the Main Stage (fancy!), Friday at 3 pm.
Finally, we will be presenting The Kitschies on Friday night, at 7 pm in the Screening Zone. We'll be dressed up and everything! The event is, of course, free - and everyone's invited. So please do join us - and enter the contest to win your own mini-tentacle!