A Tenth Collection of Fiddle Tunes from the writer of the Lorry Driver's Lunch!

October 14, 2025, 11:07 AM · This week saw the publication (loosely) of my tenth collection of tunes from the Lorry Driver’s Lunch. My publishing career has been somewhat meteoric achieving at least two figure sales since 2018, not quite enough to cover a set of Eva Pirazzi, but nevertheless it has been a bit of fun for my hobby/obsession!

For those of you that missed my original blog back in 2019 you may be vaguely amused to learn that a large chunk of the collection was written in the cab of a lorry as the tachometer ticked over to 45 minutes, a legal requirement for lunch breaks, with the help of a manuscript book and a descant recorder, and then recorded for the dreaded YouTube when I got home.

I drove lorries (that’s trucks to those across the pond) from 2015 until 2021 or so with a mixture of refrigerated transport, building supplies, and a stint as a key worker during the global sniffles driving recycling lorries. Since then I have returned to a bit of primary school work, classes and tutoring individuals, but the habit of writing tunes was too hard to shake. To date I now have written about 580 odd tunes largely written in the English Folk tradition, and with monkeys and typewriters in mind one or two of them turned out quite good!

I have put those I thought were at least half decent in the collections, the tenth of which I am celebrating today! In these ten collections, with possibly a small margin of error, (I kept losing count!) there are: 64 Waltzes, 65 Jigs, 42 Hornpipes, 45 slow melodies, 30 slip jigs, 24 Reels, 15 tunes with irregular time signatures, 11 slides, 10 marches, 5 polkas, 5 rags and 8 more tunes I can’t quite classify!

As an amateur with a primitive DAW app (8track) on my ancient iPad I have recorded those in the collections as I added them and they can be found on my Soundcloud page. There are enough to play without repeating in the car on a Journey from Taunton to where my mother moved to in Ely on the other side of the UK!

Just in case you’re looking for a few new tunes here’s a link to my publications listing on Sheet Music Plus . Here you’ll find the ten collections as well as duets and trios using some of the tunes.

Based on the folk tradition they’re all pretty well playable in first position, although they have scope for changing that about a bit. It’s always nice to get reactions, so if you do try any please do let me know (preferably politely) what you think of them!

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A Tenth Collection of Fiddle Tunes from the writer of the Lorry Driver's Lunch!

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