Arrangements made. →[More:]My aunt's funeral is on Friday. This weekend my sister had planned to come down from the Midlands to stay with me Friday night until Sunday morning. So I've made what I think are the best arrangements possible.

I get the train to Manchester from London early on Friday. My sister gets the train to Manchester from where she lives. I've given her the train times so she can get in at about the same time as me (10.30).

The funeral is across the other side of Manchester at 12.30, so we'll have time to get a bite to eat and then a bus over to where the funeral is.

Then I get the train with her back to where she lives, and we both drive down to my place for the weekend.

This works out best for us both, I think. She has to actually use some initiative and make an effort to buy her own train tickets and she doesn't have to navigate a city she's wholly unfamiliar with to get to the funeral. For me, I get to go straight to Manchester without having to pick her up.

It's meant my sister having to get two of her pets into the boarding kennels a day earlier than planned, and while she was wittling on and on about this to me on the phone this afternoon and saying that it couldn't be done I said "why don't you phone and ask, they won't be closed yet?". So she did, and they could take the mad, blind dog and the cat a day early with the minimum of fuss.

She's bringing the two dachshunds down to Essex for the weekend. They're manageable, she has a dog cage, and I've already told her that any dog mess is hers to clean up.

I expect my two cats will kill me in my sleep the day she and the dogs go home.