The enormous man I had once sent to prison stood beside me in the pool, his massive hand on my chest. With a gentle but firm push, he sent me backwards until my head went under the water.
But let's rewind. It all began in 1994. I was a brand-new probationary police officer: crisp uniform, polished boots, and a PR24 side-handled baton with less than 24 hours' service under its belt. I sat in the passenger seat of a panda car (named for its two-tone paintwork, not any resemblance to an endangered bear). Beside me was an experienced colleague, the kind of officer who had seen it all. Or thought he had.
It was dark, and our night shift had just begun on Marton Road in Middlesbrough, where you're as likely to meet a good story as a bit of trouble. The radio crackled: a "very tall, well-built man" was causing havoc outside a pub a few hundred metres away.
"Very tall, well-built" turned out to be an understatement. Within seconds we spotted him: a six-foot-seven colossus, his muscular frame stretching a yellow Pringle jumper to its limits. He moved like someone who knew the world had to make way for him. It was like watching the famous Bigfoot footage, except that next to Gram, Bigfoot would look like Twinkle Toes.
He crossed the road with a purposeful swagger and plonked himself down on the window ledge just inside a fish and chip shop.
My colleague, with the confidence of a man who knew he wasn't the one getting out of the car, said, "I'll park. You go and see what he's up to."
My eyebrows shot up towards the brim of my custodian helmet, but orders were orders. I walked towards the chip shop doorway, my legs heading bravely into the unknown while my brain lodged a polite but firm protest. A little voice whispered: better unclip your baton, just in case.
Gram noticed. As I stepped closer, he reached out a gorilla-like arm and plucked the baton from its holder. One minute I was armed and ready; the next I was facing a yellow-jumpered giant holding my baton.
He rose to his full height, blotting out the chip shop lights, and tossed my shiny new baton from hand to hand like a toy. "How do you use this thing, then?" he growled, with a glint in his eye that said he was enjoying this far too much.
Out in the panda car, my colleague watched in horror. His first thought, he admitted later, was: "Oh my God, I've killed the probationer!"
But I'd grown up on the south side of Glasgow, on the largest housing estate in Europe. Run-ins with drunk or aggressive characters were practically a local pastime. I wasn't about to let a Bigfoot in a Pringle jumper get the better of me.
Half cheeky, half assertive, I looked him in the eye and said, "Well, give it back and I'll show you."
Gram stopped, and a smirk spread across his face. Maybe he was intrigued, or maybe he liked the cheek of it. Either way, he handed it back.
Relieved, but determined to keep the upper hand, I gave the baton a little flourish and tucked it behind my back. "You won't be seeing that again," I said with a grin.
That was the moment I discovered I might have a knack for conflict management, or at least for bluffing my way through it.
The case of the hungover Honey Monster
It was 7am in the parade room, and the bare fluorescent lights were dazzling my tired brain. A particularly grumpy sergeant, whom I'll call Sergeant Sweetness and Light, dropped a case file on the desk in front of me.
"McCarthy," he said, with an impressive lack of enthusiasm, "you're interviewing Seed."
I blinked, still working out whether this was a dream or a nightmare. "What, on my own?"
He gave me a look that suggested I'd asked whether gravity was optional. "Yeah. And?"
Having recently met Gram in the wild, I ventured, "Have you seen the size of him?"
The advice that followed was far too colourful to print here. Let's just say Sergeant Sweetness and Light was not in the mood for my concerns.
Half an hour later I'd read the case file. It was less a tale of petty crime and more Goldilocks and the Three Bears, if the bears were six-foot-something, hungover, and helping themselves to lager and designer shirts. The previous afternoon, Gram and two equally enormous friends had stolen a crate of lager, drunk it in record time, then strolled in and out of shops treating the shelves as their personal wardrobe. The staff had no chance of stopping them until the police arrived.
By the time of the interview, Gram was just sober enough to sit upright, still looking like a bear on the wrong side of hibernation. I sat him in the far corner of the interview room and took the seat by the door. You can never be too careful with a man whose biceps could fold the table in half.
Gram, now more sheepish than menacing, admitted he couldn't remember much of the day before. I ran through the witness statements: a spree of thefts, public order offences and general chaos. He didn't argue. "Sounds about right," he said, in the tone of a man who had heard this story about himself many times before.
He couldn't add any details, but he cheerfully agreed the statements were accurate and said he'd plead guilty. Refreshingly straightforward.
I switched off the tapes, took Gram back to his cell and asked the custody sergeant to line up charges for theft, public order offences and generally terrorising the good people of Middlesbrough. Once the other interviews were done, all three were charged and remanded in custody.
These days Gram likes to remind me that I was the last person to send him to prison. He looks back on that time with surprising gratitude. He says he was so out of control back then that being stopped probably saved his life.
Who am I to argue? Sometimes being stopped in your tracks is exactly what the doctor ordered.
A better man
A few months later I was walking down Wellington Street, a part of Middlesbrough known locally as "over the border", where a police officer's instincts work overtime. That's when I spotted Gram. Or what was left of him.
Gone was the Hulk Hogan lookalike from the chip shop. In his place was a pale, painfully thin man walking peacefully along the pavement. My instincts told me he was either dealing drugs or about to offload stolen goods at the Salvation Army hostel.
"Hi, Gram! How are you doing?" I called, in my best friendly-neighbourhood-bobby voice. My plan was simple: stop him long enough to size him up. I didn't expect what came next.
He stopped, looked at me with eyes that seemed more tired than threatening, and said, "I've changed."
I was about to roll my eyes, standard issue for coppers hearing dubious claims, but something in his tone made me pause. He told me, completely seriously, that he'd been in a coma. That he had died, some Christians had prayed for him, and he had met Jesus.
"He brought me back," Gram said quietly. "I'm born again. I don't drink, I don't take drugs, and I don't commit crimes any more."
I didn't know much about religion then, but I was fairly sure "born again" was code for "brainwashed by a cult". Still, if it kept Gram out of trouble and away from the other bears, it wasn't my place to argue.
"You keep listening to those people, Gram," I said, patronising but well-meaning. "They're clearly doing you some good."
Not long after, I visited one of my oldest friends, Keith Howard. Keith is one of those people who make you feel like the most important person in the room, and his family are just as lovely: the kind who invite you round for tea and leave you wondering whether you should move in.
Keith had a reputation for his home-brewed beer, one I'd helped him maintain over the years. But this time no beer appeared. I started angling for a pint, and that's when he dropped the bombshell.
"I've given up drinking," he said.
"Eh? Are you joking?"
"Nope," he replied. Then came the second shock: "I'm born again."
First Gram, now Keith. Was there something in the water?
Keith told me the whole story: his journey from atheism to faith, a cracked stained-glass window, and bags of groceries mysteriously appearing on his doorstep. By the time I left, my head was spinning. Could there be something in this born-again business after all? Was prayer really a thing? Would God answer my requests?
The hand of God
Before long I was back in a panda car on a Middlesbrough night shift, this time with another experienced colleague. As you do, I made some light conversation.
"You all right?" I asked.
"Actually," he said, "I'm a bit fed up."
The Police and Fire Games were being held in Canada later that year, and he had missed out on a place in the lifesaving team. Armed with my new and slightly alarming knowledge of prayer, I said, "My mate's been telling me about the power of prayer. Do you want me to get my prayer mat out tomorrow and see what happens?"
"Yeah," he said straight away.
Still unclear on how it all worked, I asked, "What if something happens to one of your mates?"
"I don't care," he said. "I just want to go."
Game on.
The next morning, ironing in front of a video, I prayed. That night, back in the panda car waiting for the radio to burst into life, I asked him, "So, have you heard anything?"
"About what?"
I laughed. "The Police and Fire Games!"
He looked at me. "I've got a place."
That was the start of ten years of coincidences, if you want to call them that. Archbishop William Temple is often credited with saying that when he prayed, coincidences happened, and when he didn't, they didn't. He may have been on to something.
That would have been enough for most people to put their hands up and say, "OK, God, you've made your point. You're there, you can hear me, and you even answer prayers." But I had a problem. I didn't really know who I was praying to.
The book of Hebrews tells us not to give up meeting together, but I wasn't going to church or reading the Bible. In fact, I'd started looking into some Eastern practices. A friend told me they were in touch with their "guides", which sent my eyebrows shooting up towards my hairline. Still, I asked, "How do you get in touch with your guides?"
"Just ask to be shown who your guide is," they said.
So I did. I closed my eyes, held out my hands and asked, "Who is my guide?"
Then I saw it. On the wall was a giant hand, more than three feet high, with a nail print at the base of the palm.
"Can you see that?" I asked.
"See what?"
I stood up. "I need to go to church," I said. "And I think you should too."
That weekend I drove past my local church and carried on for another fifteen minutes to Tees Valley Community Church, where I knew Keith went. I arrived late, hoping to slip in at the back unnoticed. I had no wish to explain to anyone that I'd recently seen the hand of Jesus on a wall.
All the way there, a nagging voice told me I was about to ruin church for Keith and his wife, Cath. "Oh yeah," it said. "Here he comes, the life and soul of the party. That's church ruined."
We have an enemy who doesn't want us to know the truth about our potential, or how highly God thinks of us. He wants us to believe we're not good enough, that nobody wants us and nobody is interested in us. I nearly turned the car round and went home, more than once.
But I had seen something I couldn't explain. It shook me so much that I knew, deep down, that God and Jesus were real. There was no point fighting the truth any longer.
The car park was full. Only one person was leaving: Cath. She spotted me, ran over, and gave me the biggest hug and a kiss on the cheek. She was delighted, if a little bewildered, to see me. It was the exact opposite of what that voice had told me.
"Come on in," she said. "Keith will be so glad to see you."
We walked into the huge auditorium, and the first person I saw was Gram, arms raised, praising Jesus, with two little children running round his legs and his wife, Natasha, beside him.
Cath took me over to Keith. After a hello and a hug, I pointed at Gram and asked, "Is he still committing crime?"
Keith looked at me. "I hope not. Gram's in charge of the prison ministry."
I was still cagey. I'd spent my whole adult life insisting there couldn't possibly be a God. But week after week, the truth of the gospel pierced my heart. A few months later, one Sunday morning, I broke down in tears. I couldn't resist Jesus' call any longer. I went forward and prayed, committing my life into His hands.
All that remained was to be baptised. That week Gram was baptising several people, so I nervously asked if he would baptise me.
"It would be an honour," he said. Even after I'd sent him to prison.
And that's how I ended up in the pool, with Gram's huge hand on my chest, going under the water.
For years afterwards, Gram showed my baptism video on prison visits. One prisoner asked, "Hey Gram, did you hold him under for a bit longer?"
That is how God works. He is a God of restoration. He can take someone you once feared, or even saw as an enemy, and make them part of your salvation story. Read about St Paul in Acts and be amazed. Jesus is still opening eyes today.
If you want to know the truth, call on Him. Ask Him to be your guide, and expect Him to hear you and answer.
Brothers in Christ
Since then, Gram's friendship and mine has grown and grown. We've travelled around the UK sharing our testimonies, from Barlinnie Prison in Glasgow to the South Downs, and across to the home of the Welsh Revival. We've even preached in an aquarium in Humberside. You could honestly say we've been to Hull and back.
I'm proud to say Gram led my da to Christ before he passed away. More recently, as we've both faced health challenges, we've spent most Fridays together, praying for each other, our families and the work Jesus is doing through our lives. It has been a precious time.
Watch this space for the next chapters. I think they may be every bit as miraculous as the first.
May God bless you to know Him, and to know His love for you.
Follow the next chapters on Turn2Wisdom, the author's Christian walk podcast, on the usual social media platforms.