You keep me hanging on ...
My dad and step mum have a somewhat tempestuous relationship. He left my mum after thirty two years for her and he was her first boyfriend (she is much younger than him). She also used to be a fat bird with little confidence, hence no dates, but lost a truck load of weight when she met my dad in order to ensnare him as (to quote her) "he said he didn't like fat girls" (way to go, Dad, you smooth talker, you.) Anyone could see this wasn't going to go smoothly but there was no telling either of them. Temporary bliss ensued (well, for them at least - the rest of us were left picking up the pieces of my mother).

A year or so after he had burned his bridges with my mum and moved in with her, she started an affair with someone at her work.
He went mental, phoned me up, asked me if I knew where he could get a gun (he planned to shoot her, him, and then himself), then when I declined to help with that little project, went around and threatened the bloke with a prize cut handsaw (honestly) and I had to go and fetch him from the cop shop. Anyhoo ...

As this progressed, he got more nutty, she got more nutty, and eventually he told her he was going to commit suicide during an argument. She responded that it was all fine and dandy for her if he did, and why don't he go and do that very thing right now. So, he went out to his shed and obtained a thick length of rope. With her tailing him, goading him on. He then proceeded upstairs to the landing where the hatch to the loft was. Her berating him. He went up the loft ladder and tied the rope around a pulley on a joist, leaving plenty to hang down through the loft aperture. Still she encourages him.
He then goes into the bedroom, gets her dressing table stool, and stands on it. She's still giving him lip. He ties the rope into a noose, puts it around his neck, and jumps off the stool. One would hope she had stopped nagging him by this point but knowing her, she likely hadn't.
For a second or so, he is suspended like some dreadful Christmas tree ornament. Then the true dad shoddy work effect takes over and the pulley pulls out of the joist, depositing him on the floor in a coughing heap. The rope coils down on top of him, followed by the heavy pulley, which in true Darwin Awards fashion gives him a nasty crack above the eye.

Her response is to laugh her head off like it is the funniest thing she has ever seen. And then he starts to laugh - one assumes through the choking. And there began - so they tell us - their road to saving their relationship.

It didn't stop her some years later having another affair and trying to stab him during an argument, but hey, by then we all figured this was par for the course.

The amusing (to me at least) addendum to this is that my dad is, and has been for many years now, a self employed builder. I have seen his work, and had some of it in my house (he works for free for me, so - what can I do ? I'm not exactly made of money). It is often shoddy and make do (as an example of some of the crap jobs he's done for me, he once put an electric shower in for me that was patently on the piss. Even my fiance could tell it, and he's blind !) And he never, ever finishes the job properly. The above tale just goes to show that this is plainly a widespread feature with him.
(womanwhocanonlylivewithdogs, Thu 25 Nov 2010, 12:27, 5 replies)

Wow
They sound like mentalists. But happy mentalists.
(SimianKid internet faffer, Thu 25 Nov 2010, 12:34, closed)

How on earth...
...was your shower on the piss? I.E., in my language at least, off down the pub for a long drinking session?

I'm genuinely fascinated to know the explanation.
(rampants, Thu 25 Nov 2010, 12:47, closed)

I believe she means....
....skewed to one side. Or not on the horizontal.
( Evil Bastardo, Thu 25 Nov 2010, 14:02, closed)

Heh
Yus, I mean skewed to one side. I guess that may be a local dialect thing. ;)
(womanwhocanonlylivewithdogs, Thu 25 Nov 2010, 15:07, closed)

I suspect Rampants is
Merkin, as the phrase on the piss, in the UK, is a well used one..
(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Mon 29 Nov 2010, 15:27, closed)