Day a baby was abandoned

MY WIFE and I were walking along Chapel Street recently and we saw a young couple with a newly-born baby, and it reminded me of an incident back in the early 1980s.

I served as a special constable from 1967 to 1986 and found myself most Saturdays doing traffic control on the junction of Chapel Street and Tulketh Street – before, that is, Sefton decided to pave Chapel Street over.

Having dealt with an incident up by what was then the Southport Visiter office, I was heading back to deal with the backlog of traffic at the junction, and as I did, I noticed a car stopping on the double yellow lines outside what was then the Famous Army stores.

A couple then started loading the bags the young woman had into the boot of the car and then upon seeing me, climbed in and started to drive away.

I stepped out into the road and signalled them to stop, which they did.

I approached the driver’s side and he lowered the window and gave me a full blast of “only been there for a few seconds” (which was true) and didn’t I have anything better to do?

I let him finish then asked the couple had they forgotten something?

Both shook their heads and I asked the driver to step out of the car and pointed back to the pram.

In their haste to move off, they had left their newborn baby in the pram outside the Famous Army stores. Oops.

I often wondered if they ever told their child (who would be in its 30s now) how they almost abandoned it in Southport? Fred McCann Southport

WHAT AN ATTITUDE

I WOULD like to bring to your attention to drivers’ attitudes to pedestrians, especially the older pedestrian.

Having got off the train at Formby about 4pm, not being sure of direction, we ended up on the wrong side of the road to walk to Formby village, having gone through the underpass and up steps.

I walked towards the roundabout to cross down the hill; my husband, for some reason, crossed higher up.

He got to the halfway mark and there he stayed.

Cars wouldn’t let him through even though they were going at a snail’s pace... they streamed past him continuously, just ignoring him, even though the queue of traffic was going nowhere fast.

If there was a space, the cars closed up.

My husband, aged 68, had to turn round and come back to the pavement.

I consider this dangerous, ignorant behaviour by the car drivers.

Why do car owners think they own the road?

We eventually walked to the roundabout at the bottom of the hill which was very difficult to cross at in any direction but we managed it.

The other situation, same night, in Southport by Lidl, in front of the Old Duke pub.

We crossed again to halfway (there was an island), one car was at the roundabout waiting, so I crossed behind it, in between the first and second car.

The young man proceeded to rev up his car and move forward as I was crossing, laughing as he did so, his male passenger joining in the laughter.

We couldn’t believe what was happening. If the car in front had moved backwards I would have suffered broken legs.

Do drivers think, in both situations, it is clever to ignore/