Hands up who’s DSL connection has been down all day. Just me? That’s OK then. I’d hate for everybody to have to suffer the humiliation of being an ice cream man without an ice cream van. Audible-frequency modems simultaneously suck and blow. I can’t believe I used to live in a house where about five of us shared a V.90 modem!

Anyway, to attempt to return to normal blogging practice, what did I get up to this weekend? My little baby sister, now 16, came to visit me. When I was still living at home she and I used to spend virtually all of our free time sat watching telly in the front room at my mum’s house, strictly her domain these days. I used to force her to watch Star Trek on Wednesdays and everything. My relationship with her hasn’t been quite the same since I left for Norwich, which saddens me a bit. When I left she was young and we were very close, now she is a teenager and I’m just a walk-on in her life. That’s fair enough I guess, and just shows yet another way that I’m getting suckered by nostalgia.

On Friday Louise and I went and met her from her train at St Pancras and then took her to the Conran by Tower Bridge, demonstrating some pretty good sights along the way, including the best view of the gherkin building I’ve seen since I went and explored the great buildings of the city and stood at it’s base and stared up. We had a nice meal and then copped out of going to the cinema and got Solaris on DVD instead. Tom came home riotously pissed and shouted a bunch. I don’t know how familiar Nell (my sister) is with very pissed people, but she got to see Tom on full form.

On Saturday Nell wanted to go to Oxford Street/Soho/Covent Garden etc and we tripped in on a packed Piccadilly. She liked the little streets but it was Topshop on Oxford Street, the world’s biggest fashion store, that really hit the mark. Even Louise had four things to try on. It really was huge. Then we went to Selfridges and meandered around. I found that the cheese counter in the food hall there sells Reblochon, my Mum’s favourite stinky french cheese and a love of my own as well. It will do well as part of a birthday present. My mum is fifty in 15 days time.

On Saturday night I finished setting up my old iBook for Nell. It is to be her A-levels computer. She’s quite into her art, so I loaded her up with Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash and Dreamweaver. I’m not sure how she will be able to learn to use them though. They have little in the way of internet access at my Mum’s house, something which has annoyed me for some eight years now, though much less these days. I have a plan to convince them to invest in ADSL and I give it 50/50 odds at the moment. I need to sit down and work out the costs actually. It all hinges on the fact that they can buy an Airport hub to supply my Mum’s iMac and Nell’s iBook and then use the ethernet port to provide for Bernie’s PC. This would be an ideal set up pretty much and the fact that there would be no cables might just sell it to my mother. We shall see…

Yesterday, Nell and I went up the London Eye and then on to Camden. The London Eye was great the second time around as well, although I don’t think a third trip will be necessary! I got much higher res pictures of the scenery this time, being equipped with my shiny new Fuji rather than, um, my crap old Fuji. I took a bunch of pictures of the South Bank as well.

Nell liked the London Eye not just because of the cool view, but because of it’s scientific achievement. I like that, it’s something we have in common - an appreciation of objects on both scientific and aesthetic levels. It’s lead me deep into computing. For Nell, she’s kind of occupying both ends rather than any middle ground. She’s been doing GNVQ art for the last two years and got a distinction for it, but her A-levels are all full-on sciences. I’m interested to see where she ends up.

Camden seemed even busier than usual. We ate geographically diverse food from the market and drank fresh lemonade - tangy! Nell bought a cool pink printed bag and I hunted for fashionable t-shirts, but to no avail. In the process, however, we did discover tracts more market. The whole bit around by Cyberdog and up to the old horse hospital was completely new to me.

Camden Market is pretty much teen girl heaven. There are three Punky Fish stores dotted about and this pretty much sets the theme for many of the other stalls. This isn’t a bad thing though and there is a fantastically diverse range of sub-culture stuff to be had. One of my favourite aspects of the market is the amount of home made or small business stuff about. If you make your own hats or t-shirts or bags, you just go up and grab a stall. It’s sweet. I’d quite like to have a go really.

After Camden I stuck Nell on a bus to Oxford to go and visit my other sister. She seemed pretty happy with the way the weekend had gone and I had a really nice time hanging out with her as well.

One of our old Norwich cohorts and Tom’s ex-housemate, Al had flown into Gatwick yesterday and stayed with us last night. We got drunk down the sloany pony and watched Almost Famous, the Cameron Crowe story. It was excellent, a sequel in spirit to Dazed and Confused. Not sure quite how the virtually pornographic front cover related to the story though, but that’s marketing for you.

The oddest thing that happened this weekend was on Friday night at dinner when Nell was talking about one of my two step-sisters, Anna. Apparently she’s seven months pregnant! Shows how good I am at keeping up with the family.

Anna is a nursery nurse and has always liked being with children. The father, Tom, is a teacher apparently. I can’t really think of a better couple to bring up a child and I’m sure they’ll all be very happy. All the best, Anna!