Gallery 2010 - Late

153 & 154) Before and after: 1st June & 3rd June view of rear garden from bathroom window as the trees come down and the fence goes up.

155 & 156) Before and after: 1st June & 3rd June view of rear garden from bathroom window as the trees come down and the fence goes up.

157 & 158) Before and after: 1st June & 5th June view of rear garden from the Conservatory showing firstly: Robin the tree surgeon going about his business with the rear fence and leylandii lower branches stripped away, and secondly: with the trees all gone and the fence complete. Milla now plays in her bright and sunny unshaded garden.

159) View on Saturday 5th June from the eastern corner of the rear garden looking west. This is along the line of where the 23 leylandii trees once stood.

160) View looking the other way from the corner where the compost heap once stood.

161) View from behind garage looking south. This shows the new vegetable patch and the pile of old fence panels which will

162) View from behind the garage looking south-east to where the weeping-ash used to stand.

163 & 164) 30th June - it's Yana's Birthday!

165, 166, 167 & 168) Yana reaches the BIG two-oh!

169, 170 & 171) Yana & Milla celebrate. Milla can't wait for her birthday. Happy Birthday Yana.

172) July 25th 2010 - it is Milla's fourth birthday - so we have the family around.

173) Out comes the pop-up Gazebo on a lovely sunny day for a barbecue.

174) Milla opens her cards.

175) Its "Hello Kitty"!

176) What is this I have got?

177) Cool - a watering can!

178) With free windmill.

179) Time for a water fight with the Cousins.

180) I am getting wet!

181) My big sister is bigger than your big sister!

182) Traitor!

183) Grandad! She squirted me!

184) The Brown family madness manifests itself in Naomi - or is it Judo?

185) It is all too much for Grandad who has a nap surrounded by Toy Story toy soldiers and Milla's Winnie the Pooh - she thought it would help him sleep.

186) Another gift - something to do a bit of sweeping with.

187) ...and my own rake!

188) The world's most exciting trike race.

189) Birthday Cake.

190) Blowwwww!

191) Excuse me it was my food!

192) Two days later on the 27th July Milla took her seat for another Chocolate Cakey - this time Mummy's.

193) It was Liya's birthday and here we are all having fun at Liya's party.

194) Liya's vegetables that she grew.

195) It's party time again on Sunday 1st August.

196) Like the Queen - Milla has two birthdays - one for the grown ups and this one for the kiddies.

197) "I love you so much!" - Yana gets emotional and Milla endures.

198) Yana delivers her "face for radio" whilst Milla endures.

199) Yana lights the third cake in a week.

200) Pheeewww. Milla blows out the match.

201, 202, 203, 204) Milla blows out her candles with a little help from her friends.

205) Siblings Lewis, Amaia & Tiana Kenny share the trampoline.

206) Milla & Maya stop fighting for a second.

207) All our friends - from left to right: Yana, Milla, Liya, Maya, Charlotte, Sophie, Masha & Sonia.

208) 6th August - Milla & Liya inspect the vegetable patch. Just look at those Aubergines.

209, 210, 211, 212) 9th August at the Shire Horse Centre near Maidenhead. Milla has fun on the bouncy thing (with Archie), on the slides (with Archie again), on the slide and on the swings.

213, 214, 215, 216) Still at Shire Horse, Milla tackles the merry-go-round, the rickety-bridge, another slide and being upside down.

217, 218, 219, 220) What is it with Milla and Dinosaurs? Here we still are at Shire Horse with Dinosaurs and a Mammoth. Then back to the slides....

221) 11th August sees Mark in North Wales near the Snowdonia National Park.

222, 223, 224) 12th August - Mark takes a few photo's around the hotel in sunny but brooding weather.

225, 226, 227, 228) Milla, Mark and Liya go out to Windsor on Sunday 29th August.

229, 230, 231, & 232) Bank Holiday Monday August 30th and Liya, Milla and Mark go to Stoneleigh Park for the Craft Festival. Milla enjoyed dancing to the open air entertainment.

233, 234, 235 & 236) The Bank Holiday weather was brooding with dark storm clouds all day. However it stayed mostly sunny and dry. It did make for nice photos. Meanwhile Milla danced on making new friends on the way.....

237) Milla at the Craft Festival.

238, 239 & 240) Mark in Wales again on the 7th September. Different Hotel but still Snowdonia National Park as a backdrop to more photos of brooding September skies with plenty of sunshine. We've had a lot of this sort of weather and clouds over the last few weeks.

241) Mark's Transition Town Gazebo and Picnic table erected for the day at Pann Mill on the Rye in High Wycombe. It is Sunday 12th September and a beautiful day.

242) The water mill was restored into working order several years ago. This is just a stone's throw from the town centre.

243 & 244) Milla, Liya & Yana came down for a picnic at the free Pann Mill open day. Three such open days are held every year when the mill is put to work actually grinding local flour that you can buy. Many local organisations come and erect stalls in order meet the public, or sell bric-a-brac, for the day. All proceeds to the keep the mill going.

248) Monday 11th October - the Ramee International Hotel in Juffair, in the capital city of Bahrain, Manama. Mark's home for the next eighteen days whilst he is working here.

249) What passes as a "suite" at the Ramee International. A dull, characterless, empty waste of space to everyone else.

250) ...and outside the hotel? Well there is plenty of choice of American food nearby. This strip mall caters for the less-than-cosmopolitan tastes of American staff at the nearby U.S. National Security Agency base.

251) Elsewhere in the city it is either empty desert or a building site. The sand is dry but the air humid. In October the temperature hovered between 28 and 32 degrees C. Everyday was sunny and it never rained. Sunburn & dehydration threatened anyone going out at midday for prolonged periods. So take a hat and bottled water.

252) Only a short distance from the Hotel is the Grand Mosque. There is Shopping Mall with its own TGIFridays (left) and a Civil Service Ministry (right) with the pictures of previous Kings and various Princes down the side of the building.

253) The Grand Mosque is open to tourists.

254) The ISA Center is next to the Mosque (purpose unknown).

255) Manamah City Business and Diplomatic District.

256) An abandoned fishing boat languishes in an area now apparently land-locked by a new causeway in the distance. The sea is alive with fish which the local birds stalk.

258) Just to prove we aren't making this up - here is Mark on the border. It's October - he is wearing a T-Shirt and a tan!

259) The Border Tower on the Bahraini side. Normally you can go up to see the view but it was shut for repairs when we were there.

260) "Men at Working" - hilarious.

261) The causeway looking back towards Bahrain.

262) Mark's colleagues who joined him on the trip to the border - (left to right) Kannan, Orton and Naga.

263) In case you are wondering what Mark is doing here then here is a picture of the Gulf Aluminium Rolling Mill where Mark is doing some consulting. He has been inside and it is as hot as hell and as scary.

264) One for Liya. Maybe a place where they make even more Liyas?

265) Yes, they have Marks and Spencers here too. These next set of photos were taken on a walk into the Business and Diplomatic areas of Manama City on Friday the 22nd October.

266) A fish thing.

267) If you thought there was only one World Trade Center then think again. Here is the Bahraini version and yes, it has twin towers.

268) NOT the World Trade Center but actually a different set of twin towers in the "Financial Harbour".

269) Despite a surplus of Oil & Gas under their feet the Bahrainis are quite forward looking and banners like this are quite common. Bahrain is an island in the Arabian Gulf with very little rainfall so water conservation makes a lot of sense.

270) With the Financial Harbour on the left the World Trade Center is in the distance.

271 & 272) Walking down the coast to the WTC you will notice something very unusual about this building. Between the towers three wind turbines are mounted.

273) Buildings are never very good places to mount a wind turbine due to turbulence. This coupled with the fact that this is not a very windy place tends to mean that the turbines don't spin very much.

274 & 275) The Business District in the sunset. Note that on picture 274 there is a man sitting on what was the old sea wall. However the area behind him has now been reclaimed from the sea in a new business development. Most new development seems to be occurring off-shore on new man-made islands. The Bahrainis are literally manufacturing new bits of Bahrain to build on.

276) Actually a picture from August 2010 which we forgot about. In early August our Krofire House became the UK's 59th "Superhome" as decided by the Sustainable Energy Academy. To qualify you have to decrease the carbon footprint of your old home by at least 60%. We achieved 90%. See the result at http://www.sustainable-energyacademy.org.uk/superhomes/high-wycombe-richard-gardens or you can read about the project at www.post-carbon-living.com.

277) After returning from Bahrain Mark tackles some DIY. Here, on 5th November we see the Study before the makeover.

278) 6th November - all the furniture & curtains have gone. The carpet is about to be removed.

279) 7th November - carpet and underlay have gone. Foam underlay goes down.

280) 8th November - wood laminate flooring has been laid.

281) 10th November - edging scotia goes down and new shelves go up around the window. A new blind replaces the old curtains.

282) 10th November - all the furniture has been moved back in. The pesky curtains and horrible carpet have gone. New shelf space has been created where the curtains were. The new wooden floor will make it much easier to find model aircraft bits that fly off the workbench. All it needs now is a chair-with-wheels and it is complete.

283 & 284) Our fruit trees arrive and get planted on the 14th December.

285) There are three apple trees, two pear trees and one plum tree.

286, 287 & 288) Milla gets into the Christmas Party swing.

289 & 290) Timber! Milla and friends wrestle with an inflatable palm tree. Milla adopts the tongue-out-look like a proper Brown.

291) You hum it and I will play it.

292) December 18th sees a blizzard hit High Wycombe and everything blanketted with snow. It buried our solar panels.

283) Front of our home in the snow.