Archive/The Collection/Dee Kavanagh
Record PS–141 · Emergency ambulance technician · Merseyside
Dee Kavanagh
Twelve years of working in a moving room, and a map of the city she can no longer drive through normally.
- Subject
- Dee Kavanagh
- Occupation
- Emergency ambulance technician
- Route or region
- Merseyside
- Recorded
- 28 January 2025
- Duration
- 1 h 38 min
- Reference
- PS–141
Introduction
Dee Kavanagh has worked as an emergency ambulance technician on Merseyside for twelve years. She is one of the few people in this collection whose vehicle is not, strictly, a way of getting somewhere. It is the place the work is done.
This was the most difficult recording in the project so far to arrange, and not for the reasons we expected. Dee was entirely willing; her employer required a review of the transcript before publication, which took four months. Two passages were removed at that stage because they contained detail that could identify patients. Nothing was removed on grounds of tone.
She talks quickly, corrects herself constantly, and undercuts anything that sounds heroic almost as soon as she has said it. She was firm that we should not, under any circumstances, describe the job as a calling.
Four excerpts from one hour and thirty-eight minutes.
Recording location
Recorded at a community centre, Liverpool
Excerpts published
4 of the master recording. Timecodes refer to the unedited master file.
Access
Full audio and transcript are available to researchers on written request to the archive.
Transcript excerpts
Master duration 1 h 38 minThe room
DK
People think of the ambulance as transport. It's not transport. It's the room. It's the room you're working in, and it happens to be moving, and there's a person in it who's frightened, and the light in there is horrible — it's that white, there's no getting away from it.
DK
And you're kneeling. You're always kneeling. My knees are done, actually. I'm thirty-nine.
Between
Interviewer
What happens between calls?
DK
You sit. You sit in a layby, or round the back of the retail park, and you eat something out of a bag, and your crewmate's on their phone and you're on yours, and neither of you says one word about the last one.
DK
Not because you can't. It's that you'd never stop. If you started, you'd never stop, and there's another one coming in about nine minutes.
Interviewer
Do you talk about them later?
DK
Sometimes in the van, on a long transfer, if it's someone you're all right with. Never at home. Never. My husband knows there's a look and he doesn't ask, he just puts the kettle on. Twelve years of marriage, that is, in one kettle.
Addresses
DK
I can't drive through this city normally any more. That's the honest answer. Every street's got something on it now. Not most streets. Every street, on my side of town.
DK
There's a road up by the park where I did an arrest on a lad of nineteen, and if the sat nav takes me that way with my kids in the car I'll go round. Add ten minutes on. Which is stupid. I know it's stupid, I'm not asking you to tell me it isn't.
The good ones
DK
You do get good ones, you know. Everybody wants to ask about the terrible ones and nobody ever asks about the good ones.
DK
I delivered a baby in a hallway in Kirkdale. On the carpet, by the coats. The dad's going, is that normal, is that normal — and it's all completely normal, it's just fast, that's all it is, it's fast.
DK
And then you're back in the van at half five doing the paperwork and there's a brand new person in the world and not one car on that road knows about it. I liked that. I still like that.
Timecodes refer to the unedited master file. Hesitations, repetitions and dialect are retained as spoken.
Closing note
Dee has since moved to a role with more daytime shifts, which she attributes to childcare rather than to the job. She reviewed this page before publication and asked for one change: that we not use the word “trauma” anywhere on it. We have not.
Elsewhere in the collection
Full index
PS–147 · 2025-03-12 · Immingham – Dover
Ray Attwood
Twenty-two years on the same overnight run, and the bridge he still looks for.
PS–132 · 2024-11-19 · North London
Marcus Bello
Nine years on the night network, and the four o'clock hour when the road belongs to him.
PS–152 · 2025-06-04 · Caithness
Sheila Kerr
Ninety miles, forty-odd houses, and the customers she is deliberately late for.
Recordings like this one take about three hours and cost nothing.
If your work happens on the road, or you know somebody whose does, we would like to hear from you.