Paul Andrew Sneddon

Miserable Bastards Hedgehog Salvation

Sep 6th, 2026

A free chapter from Miserable Bastards. One day. Cheap drink, friendship, and the small mercies.

Mikey arrives a wee while later, looking like he had walked through a hedgerow and had a fight with a rampant badger.

Frank’s eyebrow goes up as he looks from me to Mikey and back again. Mikey is wiping down his old suit jacket like it’s got a couple of crumbs on it and not three tears and a couple of highly questionable stains. I’m sure that’s the suit he bought for a funeral five years ago. He’s still a skinny bastard, but it looks like the suit has shrunk a bit, giving him a 1980s drainpipe effect.

He’s standing there with the confidence of Messi on the World Cup stage.

“Pint please, boss. The usual.”

Nothing beats the power of misplaced confidence. “On yourself, pal. How the fuck are you? Did you get into a spot of trouble?”

He looks briefly broken, punctured.

“Nothing I can’t handle, big man.” he says, putting his fists up like a super-mega-lightweight boxer.

“Frank, can you put this behind the bar for me, man, please?” he asks, pleading a little.

“What the fuck’s this, wee man?”

“Just my stuff, nothing dodgy, I promise.” he says, avoiding eye contact.

“I’ll need to have a look.”

“No, no, it’s alright, mate. I’ll just hang on to it.” he’s turning red.

Frank looks in the bag. Looks up. Looks back again.

“What the fuck…”

Mikey goes to talk but doesn’t say anything.

“Why in the fuck are you walking about with a dead hedgehog in a carrier bag?”

“It’s, er, dead.” he mutters sheepishly.

“Aye, I can see that…”

“I saw it on the street. You can’t leave it out there; the seagulls were pecking out its eyes. I’m going to give it a proper burial up by the cathedral later on.”

“Up by the fucking cathedral, up by the cathedral…. Mikey, are you alright? Have you had a bump on the fucking head?”

“I’m… I’m fine.”

I’m sitting watching this unfold, like what the fuck is going on here.

Frank’s warmed up to it though.

“So you were going to just deposit Sonic here, were you, behind the bar, a dead hedgehog, while you had a few pints… stinking out the bar and then you’re going to make it through the tourists and the workies on the way to the cathedral?”

Mikey’s face is turning redder and redder. “Well… aye.”

Frank throws the bag at him. “Go and leave it outside…” he says before shaking his head “or put it in the fucking bin.”

Mikey catches it.

“Should I flush it down the toilet?”

“What, like a goldfish? You are really ripping the piss today, pal.”

Mikey’s out the door, and Frank’s away to the other side of the bar to get Pat a drink.

I sink my drink; the whisky sours, making me wince a little.

Want the rest? The full book is free:

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Also on Kindle if you’d rather.
Monday Afternoon

Aug 31st, 2026

So I’m sitting here. I’ve been sitting here for a while. I’ve got a drink in front of me, some beer. Some beer that says local, but it’s made somewhere else.

It’s either that, or it’s a beer made locally that they say is authentically Belgian or French or German or something like that. Then that’s how they advertise it to you.

So you know they are bullshitting you and yeah, I’m sitting here just having a drink. I’m not carrying out a purity test to have a drink at a bar at two o’clock on a Monday afternoon. It’s just this is what it is, I suppose.

So I’ve got myself a beer, and I’ve got myself a shot. If you’re going to get a shot, in my experience, a shot shouldn’t taste nice. A shot shouldn’t be sweet. It shouldn’t be like raspberry ice cream or something, or like a woman’s perfume or something. It should be something a bit more vulgar. A drink to wake you up.

So I ask the barman for a drink like this, and he looks at me like I’m absolutely fucking mental. I’m thinking, come on, man. And he starts telling me that they’ve got all kinds of stuff. So he pours me something, and I say to him, one for you too. We knock it back. And I feel it burn. And I say to him, let’s do another, and he pours two more and we knock them back, and I feel myself change just a little. Like something’s just changed just enough that I’m kind of sitting outside of myself and looking back at myself.

And someone calls him down the other end of the bar, so he’s away, and I sit there and I close my eyes just for a moment, just for a few seconds.

The street is under my feet. Your town?
Our town? I keep going.

Then I’m walking through it.

And then I’m in a room, low lights, we’re at a table. I’m talking to her, and she’s laughing at a joke I make. She’s looking at me, blonde hair, blue eyes. And it’s been 21 years.

Us. Together.

And I smile.

And then I’m moving through the city, past strangers, people. Someone bumps into my shoulder. I just keep moving. They bounce off of me, and another one. Someone’s walking out of a tall building, shouting instructions. I just keep moving, their words just bouncing off of me.

I’m sitting down on the rough ground behind where they built the new buildings, and the motorway’s in front of me and the cars are just ripping left to right. And I’m smoking and I’m thinking about something I wrote years ago. And it’s still with me. It’s still here right now.

And I feel the pulse of the universe.

And I open my eyes, and I take a sip of my beer.
Cash Covers

Aug 29th, 2026

I look around, this place is familiar. Same bar stools, same slight smell of damp and same horseshoe style.
This used to be a great bar for day drinking. Tuesday afternoon, 2pm. In for a drink. Always something happening. Always some kind of buzz.

Rab behind that bar, keeping it running.

And tonight they have got the Kirkentoun 3 playing.

A Johnny Cash covers band.

Played by a band that looks impossibly young.

Like they were just being born when Cash died.

Weird.

Might be the shots. Might be the smoke I got from Eddie on the way down the road.

What is strange though is that there are 4 of them on stage.

Now that’s a power trio.

Rab slides over another beer and nods.

The couple in front of me are arguing about something, and when the band finishes playing a song you can hear them.

Rab’s at them.

“Take that shite outside, or shut the fuck up.”

A few grins around the bar and the couple fall quiet.

The lassie on bass steps to the mic and says this is “one of our favourites.”

The drummer starts a beat and they start playing, but it doesn’t sound like Johnny Cash, it sounds like the Ramones fighting with some stray cats in the alley.

And it sounds.
It sounds.
Fucking glorious.

I’m watching the guitar player as he picks out arpeggios. Eyes closed. Leaning back.

Alright pal, you’re playing Eddies, not Hampden.

Fuck they sound good though.

The singer is smiling, moving and clapping as the guitar player takes a solo. The bass player looks intense, just pounding out the notes.

I remember Rachel and me cranking out the guitar lines as we swapped riffs. Georgie on the drums, whatever happened to him.

The fight that broke out right in front of us and fuck it, we kept playing.

Suddenly the music stops and I look up.

The drummer hits the beat.

The whole band stops.

There’s a pause and it is a pause. Like time stopped. The band holds it and we are right there with them.

Moments.
Pass.

And then they hit the beat like they never stopped. The guitarist lets fly and I cheer.

I fucking cheer.

Good fucking band this. The couple in front start kissing like they have been separated for two years.
Get a room.

They hit the dance floor.

The band roars on, the whole bar moving now.

The guitar stops.
The bass stops.

Everyone is looking at the drummer.

The beat.
The beat .

The drummer looks up.
He shouts, “Let’s fucking go”
And the band hits it one more time.

(c) Paul Andrew Sneddon
Shore

Aug 16th, 2026

Recorded a video this morning reading “Shore”. One of my favourite things I’ve written this year.

You can find the original post from January this year here

https://paulandrewsneddon.com/2026/01/28/shore/
Fridge

Aug 13th, 2026

The fridge started beeping. That insistent beep when you left the door open. They used to joke about it. Alright fridge, I see you. He stood in the only light in the room and closed the door. The light disappearing. Gone. He sighed and felt the tension run like electricity through his back and shoulders. Alone in the darkness, he ran his hand through his hair. She had always said he was lucky, he still had his hair. He had laughed, he had never really thought about it. Didn’t worry about it. Maybe that was why.

He stepped forward. He could see the back garden lit by the solar lights they had strung out between the trees last summer. All those nights of BBQ, beer and music. He smiled, he couldn’t help it. He almost tried not to and he laughed. Looked up at the ceiling. Then outside. And turned and went to bed.

Miserable Bastards Hedgehog Salvation

Monday Afternoon

Cash Covers

Shore

Fridge