The sun is setting on 12 tons of pickled onions. A dynasty is dying - and who's left?

Nellie finds herself bedridden and bedsore. But, she says, it's all a mistake. Eli had the symptoms - why should she end up in the blanket-bath?

When Nellie takes over the local pub, business booms - for every other pub in the district! Eli suggests a striptease act to bring the crowds back, and that can only mean trouble, especially for Nellie and Eli.

Eli hires a new works manager from the local labour exchange; but why does the arrival of Major Lovelace [retired] of Catterick have him cowering in fear?

Eli Pledge has been a dedicated bachelor for well over 40 years now, and it has never seemed a day too long. So when he breaks the habit of a miss-spent lifetime and brings home a fiancée, you can't blame his sister, Nellie, for feeling that there is something fishy about this romance. Any woman who is ready to take Eli for better or worse must have something to hide - and Nellie won't rest till she finds out what that something is.

The management of Pledge's Purer Pickles is pleased to offer a Directorship to any man who wins a fortune on the football pools, even if it turns out to be Stan.

As captains of industry the Pledge's have a certain standing in the town of Colne; but when you're in court charged with causing a breach of the peace, can you ever hold your head up again?

Boxing Day at Pledge's Purer Pickles. The factory is quite. The last consingnment of special gift-wrapped gherkins for Christmas has long gone. Nellie and Eli find time to spend a few peaceful hours with the family. It is a small family circle these days and the Pledge's are left with Lily and Walter, affectionately known - by Eli at least - as the Christmas Fairy and King Rat. But is it a good idea to hold a séance to try to get in touch with old Joshua Pledge who has been dead these two years? Is Lily really a medium? Can the ghosts of picklers long departed really roam the factory? Is dad trying to get in touch with Nellie from that great pickle factory in the sky? And, for that matter, what was that noise? It couldn't be the sound of phantom clog-steps…could it?

Christmas…The time for the loved ones to be gathered together in one place. But when you don't want them, and you can't get rid of them, you might find that there is not quite enough goodwill - or indeed anything else - to go round.

The Pledge's gherkins have tickled the fancy of a certain Monsieur La Vaterre in France - and Nellie and Eli fly to Paris to discuss the Common Pickle Market.

An accident of birth - but does it really matter what you are? It happens in the best families.

A week at the seaside for the pledge's. Majorca or Blackpool? There isn't really much choice when the holiday money's already spent. So it's a holiday on home ground. The Blackpool boarding house is coming up in the world to meet the challenge of holidays abroad. But not Mrs. Rowbottom's where the notices say ""after using the bath in the high season guests are requested to make the bed again"".

The problems of parenthood arrive at the Pledge's home in the form of Nigel, the teenage son of a cousin. Nellie and Eli, homely and sensible Lancashire folk, arrange a children's tea party for him, but jellies and Eccles cakes are not quite Nigel's cup of tea. Precocious fellow that he is, Nigel has more mature things on his mind in the shape of ""birds"", and some searching questions for Nellie and Eli about those ""birds"" - and bees.

Nellie and Eli have never been all that friendly, though up to now their relationship has never been actually murderous. But when Nellie stands to draw a useful sum in cash if anything nasty happens to Eli…Well, accidents will happen - especially to Eli.

When a prowler prowls in the local park it is time for decent, respectable women to lock themselves in their houses. When Nellie and Lily set off in search of him - to clear Walter's name - it is more likely to be the prowler who stands in danger!

""Of course I need a private secretary"", says Eli. ""Fifty copies of the Annual Report in pencil just isn't on these days"".

After many years of faithful service to Pledge's Purer Pickles, the time has come for the firm's entire transport - Stan and his cart-horse Storm - to go into retirement. But what kind of a send-off should Stan get? He's the first employee ever to retire from Pledge's. All the others have died on the job.

Walter and Lily, the Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman of Colne, have been together now for 24 years, and their marriage has always seemed, to outsiders, to be one long honeymoon. Nellie and Eli move in as marriage-maker and marriage-breaker when Lily confesses that the relationship is not all it appears.

Considering they're brother and sister, Nellie and Eli Pledge aren't the best of friends. Perhaps they never stop to find out what the other is thinking or never listen or talk enough to each other. Life's too frantic to take time off and discover what makes someone tick - until one of those long-lost weekends when you find yourself with too much time on your hands.

Disaster threatens Pledge's Purer Pickles when the workers start to stay away in droves. Nellie Pledge is disgusted. ""If the workers want to go in for this absenteeism"", she tells Eli, ""they ought to do it at home"". In the meantime, production must go on, so Lily and Walter are called in to keep the pickles flowing. But, though his intentions are honourable, Walter's methods seem destined to drop any reputable pickle works well and truly in the mire.

Things not only go bump in the night, they leak, creak, gurgle and rattle when the Pledge's are forced to spend the night at a lonely moorland cottage.

If you go a funny colour, lie low; it's all in the mind. They can cure anything these days.

Labour relations have always been good at Pledge's Purer Pickles; the last strike there was solved quite happily when Winston Churchill ordered the troops in. Demarcation disputes are unknown; cauliflower cutters get the same piece-work rates as gherkin girls, and the beetroot-boilers are totally happy with their two shillings a week danger money. Fringe benefits are good. You can take home as many misshapen pickled onions as you can carry. So why is there the smell of revolution in the air?

Hard times arrive at Pledge's Purer Pickles when a pirate pickler undercuts their prices. It's like the Depression all over again and Nellie and Eli face the possibility of having to dispose of some of the family heirlooms like Stan and his cart-horse Storm. But will it come to that? Can the graph of gherkin sales be made to rise again?

When love walks into Nellie Pledge's life it is a safe bet that Eli Pledge is holding the door open with his foot. Romance comes to Nellie in the shape of a self-made tycoon with one eye for a pretty face and the other for a quick profit, and the quickest way to Nellie's heart is inevitably through Eli's pocket.