ISS

Today Germany's very popular young astronaut Alexander Gerst arrived at the International Space Station. He is very much in the mould of the UK's Tim Peake and both have managed to attract so much interest particularly from children, into the whole space thing.

It's Gerst's second trip and when the existing crew return to earth he will be the Commander along with his American and Russian colleagues. Does go to show that such international cooperation and understanding can still happen.

Could well be that tonight the visitors to the weekly Friday night lecture and subsequent space gazing at Ottobeuren's observatory will have the ISS in their sights.

The observatory was founded by a club in 1966 and holds these weekly events, open to all - €5 adults, €3 children. I have no idea what the technical telescope details mean but apparently, their 60cm mirror is one of the most modern in Europe.

The buildings have undergone a few upgrades in the last 50 years and are now slowly coming to the end of the latest one started in 2016 mainly concerned with improving the facilities within the small complex. An expensive business but luckily the Bavarian State plus the County Council, many local parish councils and businesses are helping financially.

One of these is the joinery business "Könis" owned by a resident of our village.  A few years ago I helped Mr Könis with some English correspondence with a customer - a Hilton Hotel in Israel - who were having them do a lot of work on some of the public room interiors.

I was up at the observatory with Flash for the morning walk while Angie and Luna took the horses for a hack. Shortly after we had all got back, Angie's nephew Tobias turned up unannounced from Munich to deliver the detailed wedding invitation for August. He and his wife did the official registry office marriage last year with only immediate family in attendance. This year its the full church bit with 160 guests and a full programme of events starting at 11:00 am with a Bavarian "Weißwurst" breakfast (which includes beer of course) before the church service and then a full programme of entertainment .... officially until midnight.

It was great to see Toby but he couldn't stay long as he needed to drop in some other invitations on the 100km trip back to Munich. And he was semi pushed out as we had a planned visitor arrive too.

Young Jennie who we have known for about seven years rolled up. Angie had seen her by chance the other day in Erkheim and learnt that she was nearing the completion of an almost one year study of the chiropractic "Dorn Method" for animals - mainly dogs and horses. Jennie is an animal nutcase, has a horse and has also known Luna ever since she arrived at our place and of course Flash. She first visited us around 2011 when I was suffering from massive wound problems following major operations and she was one of the team from the local nursing care service that had been charged with getting me fit (and they did). She is now a team leader in a home which gets people back on their feet after they have been through major hospital intensive care and need intensive help in getting back to being self- sufficient.

Jennie had said she would take a look at Luna who has serious muscle problems. Both dogs love her and before she could take a look at Luna, Flash insisted on some cuddles. While he is a (barely) walking bag of bones with little muscles and lots of strange bumps, she did have a pull or manipulation of some part of him that seems to have loosened him up a bit.

However when she turned to Luna, there followed almost an hour of very little other than hands being laid on and massaged while legs were slowly extended. Luna loves being stroked but her reaction was quite amazing. At times one could see that she suddenly had pain which just as quickly disappeared. "Oh," Jennie kept saying as she moved her hands around and found bones and parts that were not in the right place. The hand movements appear for us viewers as no more than stroking. There is no jerking or strong movement. To be honest it looks like nothing is happening. From Luna's groans of pleasure (she literally groans very loudly) it was doing her good.

Was fascinating stuff and the effect was amazing. Luna was clearly feeling much the better for it, walked much more freely and one could even see from the hair on her coat that things had changed. Certainly, some large lumps on her joints had gone.

The Dorn method is very controversial, often claimed to be bogus. I have no idea and time will tell if it has helped. Jennie will look by again in a few weeks.

Angie and I were mainly occupied in this time with removing ticks Luna had picked up during the morning hack. At least 30 of the tiny things were still crawling around. This year has been a real bumper crop for these awful things and for the first time in probably 5 years, I have had two dig their teeth into me in the last month. Our two dogs and five cats have all had treatments for ticks this year so that they die off once they start their blood sucking. Bit of a chemical hammer with potential side effects but life would be impossible without it. Luckily ticks do prefer the animals to us humans but it is imperative to give oneself a good daily looking over in front of the mirror!

Another hot day and finally in the early evening, one of the many thunderstorms that have been causing warnings all day to appear on the mobile phone did arrive, luckily with only a few small 1cm hailstones and not the 3cm forecast. It passed through within an hour and watered the garden which badly needed it.

This storm weather situation has been stagnant over much of southern Europe for weeks, extending up to the British Isles and no sign of it moving on, at least not for this weekend.