This week I've been mostly.... driving around the country and writing poetry from various hotel rooms, in the car or at a salon as they try to rectify a disastrous home dye jobby.

This was my first experience of being a students rep for the South West UK region - yes, a pretty large region to cover - at the senate and I wanted to ensure all went smoothly so I did a dry run last Sunday and tested a free to  download sat nav for my iPad. The latter was a disaster as it told me to take the fifth exit from roundabouts with only two exits and so on. However, my fantastic partner wrote out all instructions, I supplemented them with a different download and all went well - even though I ignored some written instructions preferring to keep my eyes on the road instead.

So here are two of the many haikus created on my journeys to Milton Keynes and Gloucestershire. The first was inspired by my breakfast scene from the somewhat grubby window at the Premier Inn (yes, really!) and the other was dreamt up while walking to the hair salon in Cheltenham. Did I tell you that a flood in the house had caused me to leave a hair dye on my head for too long resulting in a strip of black roots and a Cruella De Ville hairstyle? No? Surely an oversight on my part. Anyway, it now looks less Cruella or Bride of Frankenstein so I shan't be walking around scaring young children.

Mists rise with the sun.
Swans converge, above, below.
Ripples fill the lake.

Colours explode on

Pine scented walks, muffle steps

With fallen beauty.

and because there has been a lot of talk about copyright issues I now have the heeby-jeebies about not putting a copyright message on everything despite questioning who would want to nick my stuff anyway. So this morning I have found out that holding down the Option / Alt key and pressing 'G' creates a © for me. I shall share this knowledge on the A215 forum as it seems like a sensible thing to share amongst fellow writers.

© Karen Downs-Barton

Should We Stretch Our Boundaries?

Yesterday, Sunday, a wonderful person who shall remain nameless used the whole of his Sunday to be supportive in stretching my boundaries.

I mention this because I think that it is worthy of mention due to the fact that (1) it was a human kindness I want to acknowledge and (2) it was done in an effort to help me stretch my boundaries and I want to quickly question how much I'm stretching them and if this is a good thing.

The 'selfless Sunday' action was driving all the way from the depths of Wiltshire to Milton Keynes and back. Not a huge deal perhaps but this selfless act was performed to give me an idea of the route that I will be driving tomorrow to take part in a Senate meeting with the Open University and without this kindness I may well have headed off full of nerves and trusting a satnav app on my iPad. The latter proved itself to be wholly wrong on every prompt it gave on the trial run ('take the 5th exit' on roundabouts containing 2 or 'bear left then take the next left' on a dual carriageway without a single exit visible except through trees or over a bridge taking me over the motorway - really!) and had I not known this beforehand I would have trusted its madness and ended up God only knows where. In trouble no doubt.

The boundaries I'm stretching are those of not only driving to Milton Keynes on my own - something I would have done years ago but somehow got out of the habit of doing - but that of taking part in a large and time-consuming two-year role as a student representative whilst studying for my degree. I have taken part in two other consultative committees, a regional one that has informed some of the decision-making behind the present Senate subject matter, another concerning disabled students within the university; but this is a larger and far more demanding role. The paperwork involved was something of a shocker and how anyone reads it through whilst studying I have no idea but I'm going to try.... overnight and in the morning after I arrive and try to unwind.

So, what I'm going to ask is this: Why, are roles on the student representative body still unfilled and not being flagged up to others stretching boundaries for the sake of their university and their own experience?

Personally I think its a shame that other students aren't aware that the roles exist, or that they still need filling.

Okay, those are my musings for the day and now I'm going to stretch my boundaries in the direction of a glass noodle soup that is a glorified cup-a-soup and what with the thought that I have a chair that has fallen to pieces and needs me to stretch myself to mending it.

Before I forget to mention it I'd better add that I'm still writing lots of haiku and am now seriously thinking that this has become an addiction. Once I've posted a few on my student forum I'll post others here as there are self-plagiarism issues apparently if I post in both places using the same haiku.

It's Officially a Real Monday!

Getty Images

I'm not saying that I hate Mondays, actually I don't usually, but today has just proved that there is either a very angry God out there or everyone else was right to hate this particular day of the week!

The day-from-hell actually started out quite well. Okay, I have the whole of a spare bedroom crammed into my own bedroom due to a carpenter arriving tomorrow morning to fit a new floor and yes, I bumped my shins quite badly when trying to navigate my way around the various pieces of furniture, piles of 'stuff' etc. in an attempt to find foot space that would allow me to exit the room to have a pee but... that's all part of life isn't it? To get sniffy about real life impacting is just daft and shows a lack of understanding that real life is apt to happen so one had better gird one's loins or other 'bits' and just get on with it. No, none of that was a problem for me and I even managed to get through all my days OU stuff before I forget to add that, no it was the other stuff, the unadulteratedly disastrous stuff that I object to.

Let me explain the few threads that came together to tie up and make life less than peachy today. Firstly, I have to hold my hand up to trying to penny pinch and perhaps that has added to my own downfall. I thought that as I have a very important set of meetings next week and a few grey hairs had started to show themselves I would buy a home dye kit and remedy this without losing a day to the hairdressers or a sizeable whack from my monthly budget. I did the usual thing of guessing the colour that my hair was, opted for a decent make in the local Boots store and started applying it this morning. That was thread 1.

Thread 2 in this set of unmitigated disasters that made my day was the weather. The torrential rain that has been plaguing Wiltshire off and on all day really hit my little patch of the county after I'd applied the hair dye and I was somewhat alarmed to find it not only soaking the garden but, due to thread 3 - a dam-like structure built inadvertently by my other half as he shifted gravel in the garden - all the rain was channeled into the house and I ended with a flood. As luck would have it I had a stack of newspapers from Waitrose, freebie items too, that were stacked not too far away and that could be used to mop the muddy floodwater up.

This should really have been the end of it and I could have walked away from what will from now on be known as 'Black Monday' but no, it didn't end there. Just when I was getting myself together I noticed that there was a strange beeping noise from the living room. It turned out to be the alarm on my iPad and it was trying to alert me to the fact the hair dye needed removing. I have no idea when it had gone off because I was at the other end of the house moping and sloping and quietly going from a perfectly acceptable hair colour to a more than hideous black and white stripe that is permanent. I have almost jet black root area and sort of normal pale brown / dark blond rest of hair. I look like a sort of startled skunk!

As if that wasn't enough - yes, did you really think I'd finished? Really? - the rain came down again with gusto and the stream that was previously coming through the back door changed to a river and there was nothing I could do but head outside, grab a shovel and start to demolish the dam. This task was carried out on the spur of the moment as the last of the newspaper had been used, so I had no shoes on and was still in the towel that I'd wrapped around me after getting out of the after-dye-fiasco. Towels in a rain storm are obviously not the best thing to wear as firstly they soak up the rain water and secondly they fall down.

So, picture if you can this sight - a woman of a certain age, in a rainstorm, in a garden overlooked by a school, shovelling gravel whilst trying to hold up a towel and topping it all a skunk-like hairstyle.

Mondays! I rest my case for why I'm joining the haters of Mondays.