Sandy’s Shenanigans

Sandy was never born for kneeling and praying to God.
Naw.
He came into the world fists first, a stubborn wee Irish/Scotch man with fire in his lungs and trouble always a step behind him.
And yet the thing that finally broke him wasn’t a man, or the polis or a judge…
It was a bloody bottle of supermarket whisky with a screw cap that clicked like a handcuff and its contents smelt like expensive perfume.

A rebellion killer.
A soul thief.
A dictator in amber.

And Sandy proud, loud, built like a brick shithouse fell to it like a slave.

Lucy saw it before he ever admitted it.
She loved the dafty, aye, but she wasn’t fooled.
She saw the lies, the shakes, the late-night creeping about the flat like a burglar hunting his next secret stash.
She watched the life drain from his face every time he opened that bottle like it was “mass for sinners”.

Rain battering the windows, Glasgow night howling like a banshee.
Sandy barges in, soaked, steaming drunk, half-singing rebel songs, half-crying like a wean who’d lost his ma.

Lucy’s standing there still, cracked, done.

“Pick one,” she says, voice cold as the Clyde.
“Me… or that poison controlling your life.”

He tries to laugh it off, swagger, act the big man, but even in his drunken haze he hears the truth in her tone, this is the line, and he’s standing one toe in front.

He stares at the bottle on the table.
That familiar amber glare.
The devil he danced with more than he ever danced with Lucy.

Whispers rise from it, old pals from pubs, dead relatives, the ghosts of nights he couldn’t remember.

Come on Sandy boy. One last swally. One wee comfort to soften the blow. Don’t listen tae her, John Barleycorn’s got ye. The bottle gently whispers.

His hands are trembling, heart thumping like a bodhrán in a rebel march.

He lifts the bottle.

And for a second, Lucy thinks she’s lost him.

Then CRASH!
He smashes it off the edge of the sink, roaring like a man tearing chains off his wrists.

Amber runs down the tiles like spilled sin.

“It’s me and you now,” he gasps.
“No more masters. No more surrender.”

Lucy bursts into tears not the weak kind
the relief kind.

Day 1. Withdrawals kick in. His body shakes like a battery hen.
Sweat pouring off him as if his skin is wringing out the lies.
Lucy wraps him in blankets, whispering,
“You’re fighting. You’re no’ beaten.”

Day 2. The Heebie Jeebies have kicked in. He clings to her hand like a man lost
He’s pacing the hall like rebels before a riot.
Peeking through curtains.
Jumping at silence.
Seeing shadows that don’t exist.

“Lucy… someone’s watching us.”
“There’s nobody there, Sandy.”
“Aye there is, I saw movement.”
“That’s the washing line.”
“The washing line disnae walk!”

Day 3. This is where the bottle fights dirty. He sees folk he wronged standing in the doorway.
He apologises to thin air. He argues with himself. He sobs into his palms because he’s convinced the walls are closing in.

Lucy holds him, whispering steady like a priest giving last rites.

“You’re here. You’re safe. They’re no’ real.”
“They’re judging me…”
“No. That’s you judging you.”

That night he wakes screaming about spiders on the duvet, flames licking the carpet, and a hooded figure in the hallway.

Lucy checks.
Nothing.
Only shadows.
Only fear.

Day 4. He drops to the floor.
Shaking.
Pale.
Broken.
A shattered rebel soldier.

Lucy stays up all night, wiping his brow, whispering his name, daring death itself to try her.

At sunrise… he stirs.

The colour returns.
The shaking calms.
The demons retreat.

He looks at her, eyes clear for the first time in years.

“I thought I was done, Lucy.”
“You’re harder than the drink,” she says.
“And twice as stubborn.”

Weeks pass.
He eats again.
He laughs again.
He walks taller, like a man who’s been to hell and spat in the devil’s pint glass.

He joins A.A. meetings.
He tells his story not polished, not saintly
just truth.

Folk listen.
Some cry.
Some nod like they’ve walked the same burning road.

Lucy watches him with pride fierce enough to crack stone.

One night, months later, Lucy and him walk past a pub.
The old Sandy, the drunk Sandy would’ve drifted toward the door like iron to a magnet.

But this Sandy stops.
Looks in.
Then smirks.

“Naw,” he mutters.
“I’ve served my time for that tyrant.”

Lucy smiles.

“You beat it, Sandy.”

He shakes his head.

“I didn’t beat the bottle…
I overthrew it, One Day at a Time”.

Sandy never fancied himself a hero.
He wasn’t polished, wasn’t holy, wasn’t the poster boy for recovery.
He still swore like a builder, still had scars on his knuckles, still woke up some mornings with ghosts biting at his heels.

But he was alive,
and for the first time in his life
he’d found a fight he wanted to stay in.

It started with a lad called Wee Jay.

Skinny wee thing, face the colour of cold porridge, shaking like wet washing in the wind.
Sandy found him outside the church hall before the AA meeting, smoking a fag like it was the only thing keeping him tethered to earth.

“You going in?” Sandy asked.

“Naw. They’ll judge me.”

“Son… if judging folk was allowed, they’d have thrown me out years ago.”

Jay snorted. It was the first laugh he’d had in days.
And that laugh was the first rope thrown down the hole.

Sandy didn’t know it yet, but this was the start.

Sandy didn’t preach.
Didn’t quote scripture.
Didn’t tell people to “think positive” like some polished guru who’d never smelt the gutter.

He told the truth
ugly, raw, hilarious, heartbreaking truth.

His Message Was Simple:
You’re no weak   
You’re no’ deed, you’re wounded
The drink’s a liar, not a cure.
And if I can crawl back, broken as I was… you can sprint.
Folk listened because Sandy spoke like a man who’d walked through fire and still had the scorch marks.
He’d say.
I’ll no’ lead ye.
I’ll just walk beside ye until you can walk ahead of me.”And he meant it.
Jay got sober.
Then big Archie, tough as nails but drowning inside.
Then Dougie, who’d lost his licence, job, and nearly his family.
One by one they clung to Sandy’s armour until they built some of their own.

He became the guy people phoned at 3am.
The guy who’d answer with a muttered, “Right, stay where yer are I’m coming.”
The guy who’d sit on kerbsides, hospital chairs, and cold flat floors talking people back into their own bodies.

Lucy would wake and find the other half of the bed empty, muttering,

“He’s away saving another soul.”

And she wouldn’t complain.
She was proud
dangerously proud.

But some battles cut deep.

There was Malky brilliant when sober, violent when drunk.
Sandy nearly gave up on him until one night Malky sobbed into Sandy’s chest like a wean, choking out,
“I don’t want tae die, big man.”

Sandy held him steady.

“You won’t. Not while I’m breathing.”

And Malky rose.
Slowly. Painfully.
But he rose.

Then there was the wee Irish girl Roisin, beautiful, fiery, lost in a haze of trauma and vodka.
Sandy didn’t try to be her saviour just her mirror.
When she finally faced herself, she wept.
Then she fought.
And she won by the help of Clare her sponsor that Sandy had put her on to.

Word spread.

“Sandy helped me.”
“Sandy pulled me back.”
“Sandy answered the phone.”
“Sandy listens.”
“Sandy gets it.”

Soon he was sponsoring three, then five, then eight lost souls.
Not because he wanted recognition
but because he couldn’t watch another person drown the way he had.

One night he passed that same pub the one that once held him like a jail.

A group of drunk lads spilled out, singing rebel songs badly.

One of them pointed at Sandy.

“Fancy a wee haulf big man?”

Sandy smiled a calm, steady, hard-earned smile.

“Naw boys, I’m fighting a different rebellion now.”

And he walked on.

Lucy linked her arm through his.

“You’re becoming a right guardian angel.”

He laughed.

“Angel? Me? Naw.
Just a daft Glesga alky wae his faced washed who refuses to let the drink take another bloody soldier.”

He didn’t just save folk he built a wee army of people who now saved others.

A ripple became a wave.

A wave became a tide.

And Sandy?
He stayed humble.
Stayed sober.
Stayed in the fight every day, every hour.

Because he knew the truth.

A man who beats the bottle once is lucky.
A man who beats it twice is gifted.
But a man who helps others beat it?
He becomes unstoppable.

J. J. Whelan