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about

Driving a Truck forms part of The Dark Store, an Arts Council-funded, hour-long radio ballad. It is a collection of spoken word and nine original folk songs, highlighting the significance of hidden labour and the lives of essential workers throughout history to the present day. Woven out of many threads, from historical texts to testimonies gathered during online writing sessions during lockdown, the stories told include that of a governess, the herring girls and miners, as well as contemporary supermarket and ‘dark store’ workers, a Glaswegian lorry driver, and NHS nurses in the pandemic. All of which have been worked into poetry, folk music and song by a collaboration of writer Charlotte Oliver and composer Sarah Dew.
The Dark Store provides a platform where voices are heard and invisibility is challenged, respect is promoted, and the creativity and spirit of those working in the dark is celebrated.

lyrics

Driving a Truck
Lyrics by Charlotte Oliver

It takes me 5 or 6 alarms
Sleep’s like quick sand, I’m stuck in it
The cat is hungry, she tells me to hurry,
I say, ‘Shush, I need a minute!’

Since no one else does we look out for each other,
Deliveries are heavy, my joints cause me pain,
I know I’m lucky to have a job
But I want to have a life again.

Driving a truck bringing food to the shops
I can think a lot and the pay is good,
But I work long hours, lack sleep and free time,
We’re not always treated as well as we should.

The clouds have fallen onto the waves,
Hiding my world from view,
Below me ancient jagged rocks -
Worlds trapped in tiny pools
I’m just a visitor to their home
Yet the water bids me come
To return to my seal skin, return to my real skin,
To let her swallow me whole.

Lockdown’s been strange, everything so much quieter,
Businesses shut and less traffic about,
But I have to work every hour there is,
Hours of sleep are now all that I count.

The city slides by – I want to drive into it,
People’s days ending but mine’s just begun,
A seven-year itch, it’s frustration I feel,
Wherever I turn, no escape from the sun.

credits


Lyrics: Charlotte Oliver
Music and production: Sarah Dew
Vocals: Charlotte Oliver, Sarah Dew, Nia Davidson, Karen Chalmers, Jaye Lewis, Pat Edmond, Sally Lidgley
Penny whistle: Sarah Dew
Sounds from freesound.org:
‘tractor starts’ by nomerodin1
‘noisy-truck’ by spurious transients

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about

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The Dark Store Scarborough, UK

Sarah Dew is a sound artist and composer whose audio installations have been commissioned and broadcast on radio stations including BBC, Canada and throughout the UK.
Charlotte Oliver is a poet who has been commissioned to write poetry by such varied institutions as the BBC and Scarborough’s South Cliff Gardens. Her work has been published in anthologies and journals throughout the world. ... more

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