Part One:
The School of Lake Things
Little James takes over the official tourist welcome, turning it into an outdoor, barefoot lesson on the lake's moods, how to skip stones, and the local Irish words for blackbird, wet, and magic. Mrs. Clancy is forced to accept that visitors leave happier (and damper) than they would from reading laminated facts in the ferry shed. The “Lake School" sign goes up.
(FLM August 22nd, 2025)
It began the day the Tourist Board decided to install a Lake Education Experience in the old ferry shed. They imagined displays about native fish, glass cases of shells, and photographs of happy visitors holding binoculars.
Little James, who was eight-and-a-half and thought tourism meant “people in loud jackets asking where the toilets are," wandered in after his greatest of all time school session, Mrs. Clancy, the head of the committee, was busy sticking foam letters onto a poster: WELCOME TO LOUGH OWEL: LEARN & PLAY!
“You can’t just learn a lake from a poster," Little James told her.
Mrs. Clancy said he could help by setting out the chairs.
Little James said he could help by setting the record straight.
The next morning, when the first busload arrived, he took charge.
“This way for the real lesson," he announced, leading the group down the pier.
They learned how to skip stones (three skips counted as a pass, anything over five earned a badge made from an acorn cap). They learned that the lake has moods: silver-quiet mornings, pewter afternoons, and nights when the water hums like it remembers a secret.
An American woman in a sunhat asked, “Is that in the brochure?"
“No," said Little James. “It’s in the lake."
By the time Mrs. Clancy found them, the visitors were sitting on the jetty with wet socks and wide smiles, repeating words they’d just learned from James's impromptu lesson: lon dubh, fliuch, and draiocht. She opened her mouth to scold, then closed it again.
Later that evening, a new sign went up beside the ferry shed:
LAKE SCHOOL, Open Year Round. Teacher: James (Little). Curriculum: Depends on the Weather.