I have just spent a couple of days in Newcastle, or Belmont for those with a geographical interest, to support my father's caravan park's annual Christmas party. My dad's owned the park (or the avan, as we call it) since I was three and the same people have been coming to the Christmas party ever since. They still say I'm much bigger than last Christmas (which I think is starting to get a bit rude) and seem to be getting generally seedier by the year. One of the guys told me the most laughable joke I've heard all year, "When is black not black? When it's white": ha, ha, ha (I didn't get it but apparently he could see the back of my undies - I was wearing that stupid skirt). That's not to say there aren't some lovely people who live on the park, like Ken who brings you tea or coke every half an hour when you're working in the office. Unfortunately only the whinges come to the party, the sad and lonely hide in their vans. There are so many sad people on the caravan park, you wonder if it is the microcosm it pretends to be or whether sad people just end up there, in hot little vans. There was this one man who had no nose, a lovely man who couldn't afford to get a new nose constructed after having a cancer removed, so used to just wear an eye patch across where his nose used to be. He was shy, embarrassed perhaps or perhaps he didn't like the people around, we never found out his story. One of the neighbours hadn't seen him for days and was disturbed by the stench coming from his van so called my dad. The man was dead and had been for a week. No one had noticed; probably only would have when he didn't pay his rent. Special death men had to come and remove the body because it had fallen to pieces; apparently bodies do that quickly. On all of his documents my father was listed next of kin.
How can someone die so lonely? How can someone think they have no one who would care more about them than the person whose ground they pay to park their van on?

Someone told me the other day that I'm insecure. And now suddenly I'm flushed with teen angst wondering if I am. And more importantly thinking that if I'm even considering the idea then I must be, because only someone insecure would dwell on such thoughts, particularly when they're thought by someone else. Welcome to my thesis writing psyche: one of endless destractability.