Humbug: Smiles vanish on cue for photo shoot
Small children and animals.
When it comes to photography, both are notoriously difficult to work with.
So what happens when your small child is an animal?
It's that time of year when families scrub up, dress up and head down to their local, friendly family portrait photographer.
That
is, if you can actually get everyone looking happy and fresh-faced.
We had to settle for grumpy and scab-nosed.
Despite our best efforts to avoid cat scratches, grazed knees and black eyes, the day before the big shoot Miss Two did a spectacular nose-dive off the deck, skinning her schnoz to comic effect.
Nothing a bit of make-up and airbrushing won't fix, I pacified myself.
The day dawned sunny and full of promise.
By mid-morning it was positively scorching but the girls were kept entertained indoors to protect their clothes from the dirt and their skin from the sun (no greasy sunscreen allowed on photo day).
Miss Four screamed herself into a puffy-eyed frenzy when I presented her with the pair of denim shorts I had selected for the occasion.
"I wanted to wear something pretty," she wailed, no doubt with something pink and sequined in mind.
Pretty soon it was a duet when Miss Two banged her head on the doorframe as she struggled to escape her father's efforts to dress her.
While he soothed her aching head, I foraged around her hairline making sure the bump was concealed.
Having agonised over the girls' outfits for weeks, I hurriedly selected my own attire, arriving at the studio feeling bedraggled and harassed.
Miss Two, who is oppositional at the best of times, refused to sit still. Or to smile.
Instead she ran off with the props, sporting an oversized cowboy hat and hiding in the shadows when she was supposed to be in the spotlight casting a halo with her golden locks.
When a large toy horse was commandeered to try to keep her in one place, she straddled it and tried to run off with it between her legs, before being bucked off and colliding with the hard floor.
With nothing left to smile about, it was time to call it quits.
I think we would have fared better taking the cat.
