Seasoned readers of Tulkinghorn’s esteemed column may have formed the opinion that the great man has a weakness for tales involving cute babies. This is because he does.
So it was good to hear from Jenny Gibbons, a lecturer at BPP Law School in Leeds, who gave birth to her second son the week before last. In her car.
“I had to wait for a friend to come up to the house and look after my toddler,” Jenny explains. “The contractions had started, but they weren’t very painful, so I thought I had longer than I did.”
Racing Jenny to the hospital in the family Ford, her dad Matt Gibbons got stuck in traffic and was forced to pull over in the town of Mytholmroyd.
“He was coming out, so Matt was forced to pull over,” Jenny explains. “He got out of the car and came over to the passenger side, and as he opened the door our new baby came out.”
Picking up the newborn, the no-doubt slightly panicked father handed the screaming youngster to his wife and went off to dial 999.
But the family is safe and well thanks to help and hot towels from the ladies at Mytholmroyd’s Hair & Beauty World.
“We’ve named him Samuel,” Gibbons said. “We weren’t going to call him Mondeo in tribute.”
