Rat Catcher’s Day
Today, as everyone knows, is Rat Catcher’s Day! Set up to commemorate the patron saint of rodent extermination, the Pied Piper of Hamelin, this American holiday for pest control technicians has largely failed to capture the public imagination. I’m guessing they celebrate him luring the rats to a watery death in the River Weser, rather than the bit where he grooms the town into letting him leave with 130 children, but Wikipedia didn’t go into the details.
But, more importantly, today is six days before the start of The Cut. A day on which the rats will take up their instruments and lure an audience to the water. First to the Battlebridge Basin for the launch night at the London Canal Museum and then from London to Bristol, via the canals and inland waterways, on a route unchanged in hundreds of years. Read all about it in Time Out.
