Published by Hazel Press
£10

Reviewed by Tracey Dunn

“Burnt Rain is a powerful, compelling polemic by veteran eco-protestor Roc Sandford.”

More than twenty years ago, Sandford bought a small, bleak island in the Hebrides. His aim was to live there largely alone,without mains services, and manage the land for wildlife. But the place had a different destiny in store.

Far from being an unspoilt haven, Gometra was in ecological crisis, caused by climate breakdown. Sandford found himself confronting the barest truths about humanity and the environmental costs of our actions. In spring 2019, the more-than-human voices of Gometra inspired him to join the Extinction Rebellion London protests, where he spent time locked-on under a lorry on Waterloo Bridge.

Full of rage, tenderness and weather, Burnt Rain is a brave, headlong gallop into one man’s attempt to live in full knowledge of the unfolding climate disaster. It follows the wheel of the year to chronicle his relationship with the living world in one of the UK’s remotest places.’

I first became aware of Roc Sandford when 2 of his children were part of a group of environment protesters who were occupying tunnels they had dug under Euston Station a few years ago. This was to stop the build of the environment wrecking HS2 high speed railway. A scheme so pointless and destructive destroying 39 nature reserves and 108 ancient woodlands. A perpetrator of many of the ecological problems we are facing.

My interest was further piqued when I learnt Roc’s mother is the author of the 60’s book ‘Up the Junction’. This was adapted for television by Nell Dunn and film maker Ken Loach who directed it. Nell also wrote the book ‘Poor Cow’. Roc’s father was Jeremy Sandford who wrote the 60’s screenplay ‘Cathy Come Home’ about homelessness and was filmed for television, again by Ken Loach. The housing organisation Shelter was formed as a result of this powerful and moving play.

As a teenager I discovered these books and plays and they definitely helped form me. I discovered the inequalities in society and learnt about people fighting to survive in a hostile world. They really were a revelation to me and helped make me the activist I am for the environment and social justice.

I later saw a film about Extinction Rebellion when they ‘took’ Waterloo Bridge. This was where Roc was locked on (his arm chained to a metal tube) under a lorry in April 2019. I too was there, with my mum. We potted up 3 plants one morning and took them by train to the bridge which had been transformed into a beautiful garden with at least 47 trees and shrubs and many, many plants. The bridge was serene and packed with people!

The lorry was a performance and speakers space and had people relaxing on the roof. There was a health and wellbeing tent, music, dancing, bands, artwork, signs, solar panels and many other various visions for the future including a skateboard ramp!

Very recently I had already arranged to meet up with Lazer..Roc’s tunnel dwelling son..this was to buy one of his wonderful and unusual rings carved from a Gometra island deer antler he had found there. The day before I met him I saw on Roc’s instagram that he had just published a book so I knew I really needed to write about it!

The book is poetic, fairly short and divided into 12 chapters, one for each month starting with November ..it is a spin around the yearly cycle. Full of highs and lows and the devastating consequences of living with the knowledge of the seriousness of climate breakdown. Beautiful descriptive prose shattered by the harsh realities of the state we are in globally. The knowledge that we have so little time to stop the corporations that are literally killing us. Knowing too that we are all complicit in this destruction some more than others.

hazelpress.co.uk/product/burnt-rain-by-roc-sandford

NOVEMBER Dog

”Why an Island? Somewhere to protect, somewhere to be left alone.”

A ‘Trappastine’ is a monk in contemplation alone – silence and separation.

He has escaped from phones, calendars, photos, newspapers and tv. Roc has escaped alright but what to?

”First thing, lured out by red sky, sliding clouds, pink waves and graphite sea”

DECEMBER Fly

The wind was so fierce that Roc had to hold his glasses like ‘lorgnettes’ – opera glasses.

”The sea luminous, a sharp blue, and fading steadily into mist, so you can still see white horses a mile away, only greyed out and smudged”

The wind is noisy as is the sea… too wild to go out now.

”I never knew trees could move like that”

Me too…sometimes I can’t believe trees don’t fall down.

A visit from Iain Munro..the shepherd who’s battled in from nearby Ulva “There’s your window gone”

Carapace – the hard upper shell of a tortoise, crustacean or arachnid.

JANUARY Sturgeon

”After storms, broiling sun, making the cold roofs pop and wave”

Looking out at sixty hazy miles of islands and not one house visible only the silhouette of an abbey on Iona.

R, a marine biologist comes to survey marine habitats. He has a recurrent dream that when he opens his mouth to say why he rescues sturgeon ( a primitive, strong ,bony fish) and only bird song comes out.

There are shampoo bottles, a plastic children’s book along with coconuts, mermaid’s purses and even a stinking sperm whale washed up.

Sick Planet Syndrome
”Climate and nature breakdown..people think it’s make believe. ”It’s too vast for minds to take in”
”Countless people are being torched and drowned already. who’s next?

Roc says ”It’s the biggest story in history and yet we’re lost for words”. He knows that people are not listening ”even though we’re telling!”
”We hand our kid’s agony to play with. All games now lead to unnatural disaster!”
”Our kids are skipping with a livewire”

”What do you think of humanity? It would be a good idea”

Back to night time walking. No words no people – cold air, the smell of seaweed. That silence between the waves . The earth still just doing it’s organic thing.

Paps of Jura – 3 mountains on the Western side of Jura 2,575 feet at the highest point. Steep sided quartzite hills with distinctive conical shapes resembling breasts. Pap an old Norse origin for breast.

George Orwell told his neighbour in Jura that ” he was desperate to last long enough to finish the book 1984”. In 1984 people ”are taken in by newspeak and doublethink, by debauch of language and by gas-lighting!”

Roc Sandford reminds us how Kenneth White writes about how we are gulled ( deceived ) by corporate shills…tricksters …who dance us into unnatural disasters accompanied by the rousing skirl (wailing sound) of oil and gas pipelines.
Moving hydrocarbons from point of production to the shores.

CLIMATE BREAKDOWN WILL KNOCK US SIDEWAYS

W e are reminded that if we lose our gulf stream our land could soon be underwater, we’ll be hungry. Sandford knows ”Our thirst for consumerism will decimate our landscapes…..while our money is transferred to the rich. He knows about the greenwash lies. The government’s fossil fuel subsidies of millions weekly to nonsense carbon capture schemes..(so intensive in energy use they are pointless).

We need to reduce our energy usage but as Roc says ”This is not being taken seriously. The rogues betray us”

FEBRUARY Rabbit

More squealing wind driving our author to put his fingers in his ears as it gets into his home.

“What would the future look like if we really dared to see? Are there any words for the horror of what’s being done?”. There are no words to describe our predicament. Words are not enough. They can’t express this ”Terror coming”
More treacherous wind, wildest night so far before the Great War. Even the gas in Roc’s heater is too cold to light. This existence is all consuming. Then the mundanities of life step in as when the sun comes up he discovers his milk for the tea is off! ”The little things punctuate the vast untamable ongoings”

There’s always wind blowing and trees swaying in winter on Gometra.

At last the author’s bed allows him to dream and kind of stay warm.

”Wake up! Stop being consumed by celebrities and shopping. We are in a nightmare of courage and collapse”. ”Our world literature the likes of Rimbaud and Baudelaire is mundane if we have no future to look back from”

” We’ll do anything to kick fossil fuels except what it takes” while the authors existence is ”Burning cold, snow and a laptop to cold to charge, no gas”

MARCH Cockerel

At this point it’s still whistling wind and there’s a discovery as ”soot flakes out of the Rayburn (oven) soot can be used as toothpaste”

We have the natural world revealing flowers and moss and various disruptions of nature. The isolation and no people about hits home..we need people to validate our existence.

A sleepless night, the cockerel crows. It’s dark, there’s the moon, stars, mist, the sea, an owl…”Oh no the plane above is surely killing our children”

”Someone said 5 return trips to Hong Kong from London equal one murder, usually of a person of colour, by climate collapse”

APRIL Pomegranate

Again the descriptive flowery words of the natural world for the moon, sun and clouds give way to the oh too human condition of the lack of food and heat. Those things needed to actually be able to appreciate what is around us especially when alone. It’s not idyllic when you run out of petrol for the generator (oh no the guilt of using petrol). The generator is not the only thing that is flat “The struggle of being an island but the island is a doomed struggle”

Outside of the island the greenwashing and corporate mass murders persist. Roc boils his nettles and he’s trying not to judge but ”Isn’t not judging the sin? We are all guilty of harming the planet some more than others”

The island is defeating the writer. We all have our bad days but I’ve never had a tap with ”fine pink worms coming out” or a ”dark brown leech like thing” but he knows not to be defeated.

Many words are used as to what to do with what’s going on. ”What is a considered response to mass murder?”. At least there’s the utter beauty of 6 dolphins performing a display to brighten a day and relieve the dark questioning.

Roc is leaving the island and heading to London to join Extinction Rebellion take over of Waterloo Bridge.Before the ferry heads off to Oban he has a sighting of a sperm whale, sees herds of deer. On the train there are cows on either side of the windows. At Wigan he panics for a bit when he thinks he’s lost his laptop after alighting to buy refreshments. False alarm he’s just in the wrong carriage.

There is the shock of Euston, vehicle stench, sound of death…he remembers ”even cooking is the hiss of death”

Roc is so aware that nothing is changing. We can spend all our time trying to enforce change but nothing is happening. Most people want business as usual and no inconvenience.

At Waterloo Bridge as our author is locked on under the lorry he experiences the police trying to recover the bridge but luckily activist reinforcements arrive and the police back off. Roc sees that another world is possible. It felt like the right place to be…exactly how I felt on the bridge. We only left as I wanted to photograph the occupation at Parliament Square.. another XR taken site. Roc’s highlight was discovering his daughter Blue was on top of the lorry as he slept locked on underneath.

Back home on Gometra he was very thoughtful about solutions…”Aggressive, passive, sabotage! What should we do. We must fight ecological collapse. The only thing worth doing.”

‘Later ‘A jet fighter coming over silently, ultra-low, chased by the violence of it’s noise” as lambs wriggle and the sea sparkles.

MAY Bats

One last thing. Choose your evil. You’ll go mad if you
Fight them all. Look what happened to Oscar Wilde when he fought injustice

JUNE Shark

Waking up to sharks visible from his bed. Runs to see them. One opens it’s mouth wide but doesn’t eat him.

JULY Dolphin

Roc gets on with some house cleaning using nettles as the power of nature creates huge breakers (waves). I have used long grass myself to clean pans and cups!!

There are some thoughts on why dolphins love leaping. Is it so they can see the sea?

”When you’re in the machine you can’t see the machine. But what if you are the machine? How can you leap out of that?

AUGUST Whale

A whale brings joy..when it comes alongside his boat and physically pushes so Sandford is on his back and experiences a rapture.

” Nothing is alright yet everything is”

SEPTEMBER Eagle

There’s a cold, midnight blue sky and Roc has been observing that the bird population on Gometra has dwindled, less starlings in the apple trees, no more courtship flights from ravens or clucking gulls.

”Mâesgeir, Southwards from Gometra was always white whether with plumage or droppings. Maw Sker means Gull Rocks”

Everything has reduced, a few blackbirds twitter dismally. Even the eagles fly away after sizing our writer up for dinner.

OCTOBER Stag

Under a misty sky a lone star and 2 fighting stags going about their business unbothered by our poet as they interlock antlers. The daily cycles of life go on.

”Earth may be big but it’s also small”

It’s dark wandering out as there’s more wind and a loud roar. The fear makes us know we’re alive and brave Roc thinks as they collect the wood shed axe just in case!
”Fighting our opponents makes us feel strong” There’s a strong awareness of being the only human yet still the stags holler.

For Roc is always seeing the other side looking at him – ”and we’re not conversing but drifting apart”

Still..we have the beautiful descriptions of the wild untamed nature and wildlife all around as Roc goes about the days and nights fully aware of all privileges.

”Nothing much left to think or say’ as a stag appears with a plastic rope entwined in it’s antlers then seeing lights in the distance never seen before”

Just as I finished writing this I learnt Just Stop Oil environmental direct action activists had interrupted both ‘The Proms and ‘The Late show’ on TV…a fitting end to this piece!