“HE WAS DRUNK. He knocked me to the floor and started stomping on my head and chest."
It was 2005 and Ann and her partner were having a blazing row which had just turned violent.
"By the time he finished I was virtually unrecognisable, coughing up blood from a punctured lung, with broken ribs and fingers, burst ear-drums and one eye squeezed out of its socket.
"My upbringing couldn't have been further from the world of drugs and violence that my life became," Ann explains. "Nan and Mum belonged to the Salvation Army."
By 1970, Ann, now married with three children, had started living a double life. Neighbours knew her as "a bit of a hippy but a good mum who took her children to horse shows and walked miles with her dogs".
But by night she became a different person.
"Gradually the parties I went to got wilder and more violent. I had a brown belt in judo and karate and in my forties I took up kick-boxing. I enjoyed excitement and prided myself I could handle anything."
In 1976, Ann struck up a friendship with Cyril and Phyllis from the Jesus Army. She remembers Cyril saying "Ann, one day you'll reach a point when you'll cry out to God - because He wants you and He's not going to give up on you!"
"I loved and respected them," says Ann "but I wasn't ready, then, to give up the only life I knew."
The next years of Ann's life sound like a paperback thriller blurb. Home grown pot. Arrested for possession. Holloway prison. Arrested
for violence. Banned from the county. Eight years on the run. Then one evening in 2005 - thirty years after Cyril's words - his prophecy came true when Ann's partner violently attacked her.
"I'd probably have suffocated in my own blood but fortunately he was so drunk that he passed out. I was able to drag myself out of the house. A neighbour dialled 999. My partner was arrested and later sent to prison. I was taken to intensive care.
"It was a horrible experience. But God used it to bring me to my senses. As soon as I got out of hospital, friends from the Jesus Army came and prayed for me. That night I had such an amazing experience of God's love that I shook all over! I knew Jesus died for me and He'd forgiven all my many sins. Soon after, I got baptised and joined the Church."
Ann's dramatic conversion became the talk of the town.
"I have to be honest and say that bits of my lifestyle are taking a while to change. I was in a pub recently talking to people about Jesus when somebody picked a fight. I got right in the middle of it. I ended up in handcuffs. The police knew about my temper and my kickboxing so I got cuffs on my ankles as well.
"I must be one of the few grandmothers to be given a five-year ASBO and banned from every pub in town.
"But God is changing me. I really am a new person. The best thing is that the new life that God's given me is a million times more exciting that my old one!"
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