It’s true what they say: never work with children or animals. And never try to do anything – work or otherwise – when it’s hot and tempers (as well as temperatures) are high. All I wanted was a nice picture of myself in my new summery frock, something to make me feel a bit better (flagging in the self-love department this week, mainly due to the fact that my hair, postpartum, is falling out at an alarming rate!) but my plans were thwarted about five times over.

Ooh, I thought, possibly naively; I’ll do a lovely feature about beautiful, crisp white cottons and it’ll be all seasonal and relevant and stuff. I can lean against a distressed wall with the rose bush just out of focus and I’ll look like the sort of woman who collects eggs in a basket and bakes lemon drizzle cake in her AGA before reading a high-brow novel in her luxury hammock. 

But no. It was thirty-one degrees in the garden and – though I absolutely love hot days – the heat presented a number of problems. Firstly my makeup sweated off and went patchy. Secondly, I sat down for a minute too long in the new crisp white cotton dress and whilst I sat there, my body heat acted as a sort of reverse steam iron, creating creases and folds where there were previously none.

So then I had to have something to hold in front of me and mask the creased area/create a distraction; the nearest movable thing was Angelica, who happened to be wearing quite a presentable dress herself. I know, I thought, in yet another naive moment, I’ll make it into a mum-and-baby photo – it’ll be like one of those lovely portraits that you see on Instagram, where they look as though they live in a beach hut and only ever eat avocados on toast.

That didn’t happen either. Angelica screamed from the moment she was press-ganged into the shot – the only way she would interact with me at all was if Mr AMR told her to look for snails. She likes snails. And so the only really passable shots we managed to salvage from the photographic wreckage were the ones of Angelica searching my hair for snails.

Our poor neighbours. Mr AMR bellowing “search Mummy’s hair for snails, where are the snails? Can you see ANY SNAILS? In Mummy’s hair! Are there any snails?”

Also, poor Mr AMR. He’s actually a proper photographer, one who produces amazing work and flies all over the shop taking portraits of celebrities and important people, but every now and then I rope him into taking pictures of me. And I always make him do it in about thirty seconds flat, with a crap camera and no lighting and a stubborn, impatient model (me) who refuses to do as she’s told. I’m amazed he agrees to do them – I always think it’s a bit like asking a chef to serve up a microwave meal on a cracked plate. In a michelin restaurant. (You’re the discerning diners in this analogy, obviously.)

Anyway, I said that I wouldn’t post any pics but here we are – I fancied a bit of a “behind the scenes” ramble today. My brain is a bit fuzzy this week and I’m struggling to get my beauty posts edited to a satisfactory standard.

My dress, if you fancy some crisp white cotton, is the Camellia from Hush here* – £69. Angelica’s dress is from Little Bird at Mothercare here – I went a bit crazy buying Little Bird stuff last week, it’s so retro and brilliant – and her shades are also from Mothercare. I think they were a fiver.