I’ve done it. I’ve scarred BB for life. Despite best efforts, this is her first passport photo. It’s going to haunt her for the rest of her life. And she’s going to hate me for it.

Kissable lips and delightfully chubby cheeks aside, how is it possible that she looks as though she’s been shouldered into the frame with her hands behind her back by a burly police officer having done something she knows she really shouldn’t? And how is it possible that what was a fairly expensive salon bob looks like I’ve put a pudding bowl on her head and cut round it. Badly.

What’s worse is that I knew this was going to be an Important Photograph, but still managed to come home with this. I should have done my homework. I thought, like an adult passport, both ears had to be in the shot and I duly tucked her hair out of sight. It turns out they’re far more lenient these days, so she needn’t have looked so pudding-bowly after all. And the bearded Timpson’s man in a maroon apron taking the photograph didn’t help either.

The only saving grace is that the passport will have to be renewed in five years, not ten. Surely being chastised for a photograph that is ‘sooo embarrassing’ by an almost seven-year-old will be better than being chastised by a nearly twelve-year-old. Won’t it?