30 May: Buckets

Today is My Bucket's Got A Hole In It Day. To celebrate, 10 facts about buckets.

1. Why is today My Bucket's Got A Hole In It Day, anyway? Apparently, it’s a commemoration of the comedy song There's a Hole in My Bucket in which a character called Henry complains to another character called Liza that his bucket has a hole in it. Liza tells him to fix it. Henry, it has to be said, isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. Or perhaps he’s just trying to get out of doing any work. “With what do I fix it?” he asks. “A straw,” says Liza. The straw is too long. So cut it. With what? A knife. But the knife is dull. So sharpen it. With what? With a stone. But the stone is too dry. So wet it. With what? Duh. Water, of course (although in a NSFW version perhaps Liza could suggest he pees on it). Ah, but in what do I fetch the water, Liza? In a bucket. But…

2. What’s the difference between a bucket and a pail? In everyday parlance, the words are used interchangeably, but technically, a bucket is a container with a wide opening at the top and a handle, used for carrying things, while a pail is for shipping things and has a lid.

3. Buckets have been used for thousands of years. Sculptures dating from around 3200 BC show Pharaoh Narmer with a servant carrying a bucket.

4. Early buckets were made from animal skins. They can be made of wood, metal or plastic.

5. Sometimes, buckets have sacred uses. Sculptures from Assyria-Babylonia and the Olmecs from Mexico show deities and priests holding buckets of water to be sprinkled using a pine cone. More recently, when a Catholic person died, people would bring holy water from the church in a special bucket to sprinkle on the corpse.

6. This custom is one of the suggested theories to explain the term “kick the bucket” meaning to die (or d*e or be unalived on social media where any word pertaining to death apparently has to be censored). Other theories suggest it started with hanging, where the condemned criminal or suicidal person stood on a bucket with the noose round their neck, and it would then be kicked away. Or it might come from an old word for a beam on which Pigs were slaughtered. Or from the idea of a Goat which kicks over the bucket after it’s been milked, signifying a bad ending.

7. No prizes for guessing that this is where the term “bucket list” comes from, meaning a wish list of things a person wants to achieve before the end of their life, or before they kick the bucket. In 2007 the term was used as the title of a film directed and produced by Rob Reiner and starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two terminally ill men who take a road trip in order to complete their bucket lists.

8. There was once, allegedly, a war fought over a bucket. The War of the (Oaken) Bucket was fought in 1325 between two rival city-states in Italy, Bologna and Modena. The story goes that it started when the Modenese stole a bucket from a Bolognese well. Sadly, it’s just a myth. If anything, the bucket wasn’t taken until the end of the battle, when it was taken as a trophy by the victorious Modenese.

9. There’s an obsolete measurement called a bucket, which is 4 imperial gallons (18 L; 4.8 US gal).

10. Occasionally, writers have named their characters after buckets. Charles Dickens created Inspector Bucket, a central character in Bleak House. Roald Dahl named the protagonist of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory Charlie Bucket, and of course, there’s Hyacinth Bucket, the main character in Keeping Up Appearances, who insists it’s pronounced “bouquet”. Finally, "Buckethead" is the stage name of American rock guitar player Brian Patrick Carroll.

I also write novels and short stories. If you like superheroes, psychic detectives and general weirdness you might enjoy them. 

Check out my works of fiction at https://juliehowlinauthor.wordpress.com/my-books/