Then to St. James Church for the Family Carol Service in late afternoon
Then to St. James Church for the Family Carol Service in late afternoon

With the weather still mild, I took Sam for some water retrieves and then Daniel and I completed some great computer upgrades. Then to St. James Church for the Family Carol Service in late afternoon.

The weather was wet and windy again but at least still mild and so I took Sam over to the Common again and put him through his paces on some more water retrieves. He was still very cautious about getting out of his depth to begin with but then warmed to it and was swimming in the end. I will have to give him several such sessions before he is totally trusting and throws caution to the wind.

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Back to give Daniel some encouragement to get up and then seek his help in finishing the upgrading of my computers. We backed up my Amstrad lap-top to the new high-capacity machine and then disassembled the Amstrad and eventually took out the old 40MByte hard disk and tried to fit the new 250MByte one! This was not straightforward as the power connectors were different but I cut some wires, extended them and then soldered on the power leads to make a connection. T

o our surprise the new disk worked perfectly once the machine was reassembled and, not only did it provide much more data storage, but it also speeded the machine up considerably due to the faster disk seek and data transfer times. By the end of the day, we had the computer software and data fully reinstalled and the network working much more efficiently. A trip to St. James Church for the Family Carol Service in late afternoon.

Daniel would not come but the girls joined us and we found the service quite nice. Sad to see the congregation smaller than in recent years and the choir reduced to four members, two of which were the Rev Peter Lewis's own children! Some television with the family watching and enjoying the last episode of "The Borrower's" Series. I had walked Sam before church but, as the sky was clearing and the temperature dropping, I kept him on dry land but still concentrated on some "drop" commands to the stop whistle.