When Chiara’s fringe first starting hanging in her eyes when she was little, David decided he should be the one to give her, her first haircut. Trimming a fringe sounds like a simple task, but we’ve subsequently learned that there is skill involved. Chiara’s fringed looked hacked at and it was too short to fix for months.

So when Joe’s fringe started brushing across his eyes (as per the pic), I booked an appointment with a professional and the other day, we set for the hairdresser.

Total time taken to: park car; wake Chiara up; unstrap two children; pick up a grumpy Chiara in one arm and Joe in the other; negotiate the locking of the car with the assistance of the car guard; cross the road on a blind corner; get up the stairs into the salon; try to put down unsettled and crying children; throw down handbag and nappy bag; remove jackets; sit down = 8 minutes.

Total time taken to cut fringe = 1.5 minutes.

This seemed hugely inefficient to my Type-A mind. What could I possibly do to maximise the efficiency of what felt like an expedition?

Well, I was in a hair salon so perhaps they could wash and blow dry my hair and I could walk out looking fabulous AND Joe would no longer have hair hanging in his eyes. As it turned out, Joe’s hairdresser was able to squeeze me in. So off we traipsed to the basins where Joe obediently sat on my lap and Chiara sat happily in the chair next to us.

Towards the end of the wash, I started mentally high-fiving myself and thinking what a great idea this was.

After the wash, we passed the reception area and the receptionist offered Chiara a sucking sweet. I was about to refuse on her behalf but to be perfectly honest, I thought it might occupy her for five minutes. Instead, I carefully explained to my three and a half year old that those sweets needed to be sucked for a long, long time and that they couldn’t be swallowed whole . She probably didn’t fully understand but instinctively she knew that any sign of non-comprehension would jeopardize her chances of being given the sweet so she nodded sagely and popped it in her mouth.

I settled down in the hairdresser’s chair with a toddler on each knee – one happily sucking her sweet and one whose phobia of hair dryer noise I had conveniently forgotten. As soon as the apparatus was switched on, Joe screamed as I have only heard him scream when an inoculation needle pierces his upper thigh. He’d stop for breath and allow himself to become distracted every so often and the screeching would relent – but only momentarily.

And then Chiara started coughing. Or was she gagging? Or possibly choking on that wretched sweet? I bashed her on the back just in case but she seemed fine. And then she was gagging again and not so fine. I needed to do something, stat. If only I’d taken notes in that First Aid Course. I shoved Joe in the direction of the twenty-something hairdresser. I’m not sure who looked more terrified at this point – the hairdresser or Joe. She was half paralysed in fear, still brandishing a roaring hair dryer.

“Take the baby!” I was forced to yell at her, simultaneously shoving Joe into her arms.

I then proceeded to pound a gagging and spluttering Chiara on her back and had just remembered the part from the First Aid course about putting them on your knees and whacking them between their shoulder blades, when a purple, syrup-y thing flew out of her mouth.

Thank God.

I then settled back down in the chair with the kids on my lap. Joe went back to screaming his lungs out as soon as the hairdryer started up, the hairdresser looked mildly traumatised by the near choking ordeal and my hair was only half-finished. I think in an effort to normalise the situation, the hairdresser asked me for the second time if I was certain I wouldn’t like that cappuccino? I’m not sure what kind of multi-tasking, supermom can sip cappuccino with a screaming one year old on one knee and a freaked out three year old (vowing never to eat sweets again) on the other, but I’m not that mom.

As the poor woman next to me got up to leave, I apologised profusely for disturbing her experience so and mumbled something about forgetting about Joe’s phobia of hairdryers.

“Don’t worry,” she replied. “My two year old has a fear of people and screams when she comes into contact with strangers.”

I felt mortified for disturbing her tiny tranche of me-time.

Moral of the story: going to the hairdresser to get a boy’s fringe cut is an inefficient process – accept it.

Second moral of the story: leave your kids at home with the nanny when you want to have your hair done.