Lionel’s boring life as a salesman in a lacklustre electrical appliances store is instantly revived when vibrant, quirky Beatrice wanders into his store, looking for a new vacuum cleaner. When this malfunctions, she asks Lionel to come over to her house to fix it. Lionel is bewitched by Beatrice and, in order to see her again, he hatches the plan of breaking into her house to sabotage her household appliances.

An undertaker's secret admiration for the deceased is interrupted by a family quarrel that erupts in the final few minutes at an Irish wake.