Opening Lines

FOR me, it’s all about the back-gardens. Yes, I know the ‘ice-bucket challenge’ is about raising awareness and money for motor neurone disease, but it’s also about good-natured peer pressure and the awesome power of ‘viral’.

For those of you not on ‘the Facebook’, the ice-bucket challenge is a craze whereby millions of people have been filmed throwing containers of ice and water over themselves, in aid of motor neurone disease. They then nominate someone else to do the same. It’s like Necknominations, but hasn’t made Liveline yet. Actually, shurlookit, didn’t Daithi do one at the Roses? There you go — that thing.) Back to the back-gardens. The back-garden is the part of the house that you rarely see. It’s like your pyjamas — not for public viewing. For the past two weeks, thousands of Irish people have knocked through into their inner sanctum and we’re all having a good old gawk. Because the nominations are short notice, no one has time to do any tidying. It’s like as if the stations were announced at mass the hour before and no one knew who was next.

The same goes for the more jaundiced videos, where people have condemned the craze as attention-seeking (before going on to seek our attention). I’m not even listening to what they are saying about Evil Big Pharma or how the money is allegedly being spent. All I see is that they haven’t put creosote on the garden fence since the euro came in.

Matt Damon did a good video, drawing attention to global water supply, but I didn’t care. I wanted to know if Matt Damon had a shed. I know what mental age I am now, because I watch a lot of these videos, wondering where they got the grand bucket.

It’s also a sweet portrayal of family life. Some American dude-bro types have gone to extremes, like picking up glacier water with a helicopter landing on a mountain and having the helicopter dowse them. I have zero interest in helicopters. I would rather watch a toddler drench Daddy’s upper arm with her bucket-and-spade. Charlie Sheen can empty a million dollars onto his head for all I care. The real star is a 70-year old Irish Mammy panicking as the ‘phone-camera’ starts acting up.

In many of the videos, there is a dog wandering around, investigating excitedly. Dogs are always excited, but they’re especially excited in this one, because adults are being silly, which brings them closer to dogs’ way of thinking. You rarely see a cat. Funnily enough, cats object to the ice-bucket challenge for the same reason its human detractors do. Namely, that the time and resources could be spent on a more worthy cause. That cause may be another charity or Gaza. For cats, the ice-bucket challenge is a waste of resources that could be far more usefully deployed for the betterment of cats. I’m glad loads of money has been raised. But, for me, the whole thing has been priceless.