James Campbell Author

 I'm very lucky to live in the corner of three acres of previously unused farmland that we call Thistle Doo. The plan is, over the years, to turn this into an amazing food forest where children and real people can come and learn about growing their own food in a sustainable and permacultury kind of way whilst stuffing their faces with berries and fruit and weird green things that they're not supposed... don't eat that! It is currently the middle of winter so most of our jobs around the place are structural.  I am mainly making paths.  My method is to lay flattened cardboard boxes on the ground and then cover them with woodchip. The cardboard I collect from outside people's houses the night before recycling day and around the back of petrol stations and supermarkets.  So it's free. The woodchip comes from strange, elvish tree surgeons who frequent the area.  I registered a corner of our field on a website called www.arbtalk.co.uk which is where tree surgeons hang...

 Here is what I am writing at the moment.  I'm just putting together the first ten chapters or so and synopsis of Intergalactic Mermaids!  Then I'll send it to my agent who will hopefully show it to some publishers.  We'll see what happens.   I'll share the first chapter with you.  It's only a first draft. Yvette, the oldest of the children, stood on a large rock and let her gaze fall on the cool rippling waters of the lagoon. The rock was slippery but there was something about her feet that gave her complete mastery over their grip. She bent her knees and lifted her hands to a point above her head, then her powerful legs propelled her high up into the air. The others watched as she tucked her knees into her chest and then opened up into a straight line and like a knife, she stabbed into the water, making barely a splash. As soon as she was under the water, the magic within her began to work its hidden mystery. What had been the sort of pair o...

 I spent far too much time the other day wondering about the words custard and flustered and similar words that happen to rhyme. If you take the word mustard , it sounds exactly the same as the word mustered . Mustard is weird yellow gloopy stuff that you put on on sausages.  Mustered is the past tense of to  muster, meaning to gather together.  He mustered the troops ready for the attack.  She mustered her courage before confronting the mice about what they'd done with the mustard . So custard is also yellow stuff but if you put it on your sausages, people will become worried for you and suggest you take a holiday or see a professional.  As far as I know however, there is no such word as custered .  As in the past tense of custer . So I'm wondering what could such a word mean?  To custer .  I think it's a verb that means to have one's army or other forces surrounded and taken apart.  As in Colonel Custer, the American cavalry office...