I take my hat off to the hair-dressers, and not just because it makes it easier for them to reach the follicles.

This week I spent Saturday afternoon in the barbers undergoing double bypass surgery after an emergency incident in the kitchen.

Is it just me, or do you sometimes do something you know will go horridly wrong, like drinking orange juice from the carton and ruining your favourite T-shirt, or squeezing the car through a gap that doesn’t stretch and cursing the scratches?

Well, this week I cut the boys’ hair.

Even as I reached for the shears, I knew deep inside that it is only acceptable to trim a child’s hair at home if they are under the age of two and only then because they’re too young to care how they look.

I’d learnt this lesson a long time ago and have the photographic evidence of bowl-headed toddlers to prove it.

However, trapped between a rock (reluctant children whose hair disguised their identity and who were beginning to resemble Highland cattle) and a hard place (a family christening the following morning and a new school term), it seemed that the DIY removal of just half an inch of golden locks to clear the eyes would be a quick and easy solution and postpone the expense and awfulness of a trip to the barbers for a week or two.

But as if enchanted by the black magic of a vindictive leprechaun, after one snip of the scissors a short fringe appeared and The Youngest looked as if he’d stepped from a 1970s cereal packet, his face framed by soft curtains of gold.

You’d think this would have stopped me, but made desperate by the shortage of time, I proceeded to shear the eldest, the longer top blending into short back and sides like a giant nuclear mushroom, an explosion that paled in comparison with The Daughter’s guffawing.

There was nothing for it but to wrap them in headscarves and join the slow-moving Saturday crowds queuing for a clippering.

And so with this 21st century tale of the hair and the tortoise I was reminded of another wisdom, more haste, less speed.

Especially when it involves scissors.