I left home this week to make a short film for The One Show on BBC One. As a journalist with a public service broadcaster, I’m within my lockdown rights to do so, by the way. But feel free to scoff long and loudly at the notion that I’m any kind of essential worker.

The film I left lockdown to make this week was all about keyworkers – midwives and nurses with Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS trust. Early on in the Covid-19 outbreak, the trust was concerned that new and expectant mothers were increasingly reluctant to come to clinics and hospitals for checkups. The call went out for help. West Bromwich Albion and Aston Villa football clubs put their hands up, and so it is that the executive boxes at the Hawthorns and Villa Park are ringing incongruously with the sound of babies crying. I’ve been watching West Brom at this ground every other weekend since April 1974, and I’ve heard all manner of wailing and gnashing of teeth there in that time, but never babies crying.

I was beyond delighted to meet a four-day-old boy named Albie, after the club his dad supports and, with awesome serendipity, where Albie was presented for his first post-natal checkup. Babies of supporters of rival teams are also welcome, I should point out.

The fascinating thing for me was how ideal the place is for this kind of clinic. One long-serving midwife told me she wished they could stay there for ever. It’s spacious and clean and there’s as much free parking as you like. Above all, bar the sweet music of babies crying, it’s a haven of peace and calm. Who would have thought it of the place where I have regularly been driven half-mad with stress for nigh-on 50 years.

• Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist