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​I was halfway through a lukewarm Greggs sausage roll, parked up outside the Co-op like a man on the edge of something apocalyptic, when the notification lit up my phone like divine intervention. Henham, Essex. Facebook Group – New Post. Usually, it’s conspiracy theories about curtain twitchers and dog poo, but this one had a pulse.

​”There is a ferret running alongside the tennis courts.”

No punctuation. No explanation. Just a raw, unfiltered report from the frontline. I knew it must be Colin.
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This wasn’t just any ferret. This was the fabled agent provocateur of the village green. The quadruped chaos merchant. The ferret formerly known as “that bloke’s escape artist” but who now answers to no man, not even the Parish Council.

I slammed the van into gear and hurtled towards the courts like a deranged Deliveroo driver with a death wish. Something was happening in this sleepy Essex enclave. Something feral. Something profound.

When I got there, the sun was casting lazy stripes across the mossy hardcourt surface. Retired blokes in quilted gilets stood gawking as they’d just seen Elvis doing lunges behind the net. And there he was, Colin, resplendent in a child’s high-vis vest and a tiny road cone perched atop his head like some psychedelic traffic marshal from the rodent underworld.

He wasn’t running. He was gliding. Swaggering. The raw confidence of a creature who’s seen the abyss and come back with a cheese string and a criminal record.

A small crowd had gathered, mums in athleisure, a Labrador named Jeremy, and one bloke inexplicably holding a mop. “He’s heading for the bowls club!” someone shrieked. But Colin knew. He paused. Looked back.
​Clocked the Quavers.

Someone, maybe a prophet, perhaps just a dad named Steve, had left a pint and a bag of Quavers on the path like an offering to the Old Gods. Colin sniffed once. Twice. Then dashed off again like a furry fugitive from Network Rail.

Now, whether this was deliberate social commentary or a tragic escape from a children’s party gone wrong, I can’t say. But there was something almost too symbolic about it, a lone mustelid in hi-vis, running laps around a society too slow to keep up.

He is us. We are him. And somewhere, deep in the hedgerow, he’s laughing.

Long live Colin.

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