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 ...