You know that can't-bear-to-look feeling you get when someone's just cut your hair..?

And the sense of crushing despair when you see it..?

Well, I don't, obviously. Although I do get a slight frisson of fear that I'm going to slip with the clippers and shave off my own eyebrows. Toby, however, experienced the full gamut of barbering emotions yesterday.

To be honest, I thought he looked a bit startled when we told him he was going to the hairdressers...

But, as you can see, he did need a trim. For the past few weeks he's been looking like a long-haired stunt double for Jim Carrey in Dumb & Dumber. Frankly the boy looks like a fool, and he knows it. Or maybe he doesn't. But I know it, and I'm not afraid to say so in public.

This hair cut has been booked for weeks, and it couldn't come soon enough for me. Every time we walk to the shops, we look like Scooter Braun and Justin Bieber circa 2009. I'd offered to cut Toby's hair myself, like my Dad did for me when I was younger, but unfortunately Lisa's seen photos of me as a child, and told me that if I went near Toby with the kitchen scissors, she'd use them to cut off something of mine.

So it was back to the salon yesterday for a cut and blow dry (the hot air was provided by Amelie). Being a teenager at heart, Amelie asked for her own hair to be straightened, and was pretty pleased with the result...

If you're wondering why she looks like a sunburnt panda, it's because she went on a school trip to the beach on Thursday, and chucked her sunglasses out of a moving train. That, combined with the fact that she couldn't find her own sun cream, means that she now looks a lot like Hiawatha.

But as for Toby, he responded to his transformation from gormless fool to cool young dude by sitting in the salon, rubbing his hair, and looking anxious that he could now feel his forehead. In the end, he made a dash for the nearest park, where Amelie considered the situation, while Toby pointed the way to the nearest hat shop...

In the end, he suggested that the answer to his problems might lie in the heavens...

But no manna was forthcoming...

And the only things looking up were my children.