Nearest And Dearest

When Nellie chases Eli out of the ancestral home, Lily and Walter come to stay, and stay and stay... How ever will she get rid without hurting their feelings?

Eli's out late again, the dirty stop-out, and Nellie can't take any more. He's stopped his last stop out! She's trapped him in the window frame, packed his case and thrown him out of the house. Next stop for Eli is Stan's rather dusty, single room house. He refuses to go back grovelling to Nellie and would rather sleep stretched out on the wooden chairs.

As always, there is a plan. Eli sets to work getting Stan to phone Nellie with a barrage of heavy breathing calls, putting the fear of God in her and making her realise she can't be in the house on her own. However, she has already employed her own stony-faced house guard in Walter, which results in the Tattershalls moving in!

Many weeks later, Eli is still at Chez Stan - drinking the shaving water as it tastes better than the tea - and Walter and Lily are still staying with Nellie, playing board games instead of helping with the housework. Nellie wants Eli home, Eli wants to go home, and both want Lily and Walter back at their own home! Cue Eli plan No 2, a good old-fashioned haunting. Nellie sets the seed of a ghost story and instructs Eli to moan and shake his 'trankliments' about to scare Lily and Walter away. The bedroom is a chorus of moans, groans, broken pots and shaking beds, the last of which wakes Lily, who apparently can't sleep in a strange bed and instructs Walter they're leaving immediately!