Call him Lenny … for he is many

I can’t resist the reference to scripture (Mark 5: 9) I used in the title to this blog and whenever I’m asked about how I came to write about the evil little bastard Lenny Durning. He first raises his ugly head in Wrath and Remembrance, where he breaks into the wrong home and gets the beating he deserves. In Hitting Back, he retells that incident, along with many others, from his own perspective.

Inspiration for the character came from many individuals I have known and observed since my teens. Lenny Durning is a composite of all of them. During my late-twenties to mid-thirties, I lived in an area where a group of guys my age always hung around at the top end of the street. They dressed the same, spoke and acted the same, and seemingly made a life-career out of avoiding conventional employment. However else they made their money, I didn’t know because I wasn’t a part of their group and I didn’t want to know. I lived in the same area and was on nodding acquaintance, but that was all. They didn't seem to have any long-term goals, dreams or ambitions. They just seemed to live in the moment, content simply to make it through the day. I wouldn’t have trusted any of them as far as I could have picked them up and thrown them. I was content to keep my distance, observe, collate notes as I passed by on my way and caught snatches of their conversations. People inspire me and for that reason I’ve always been a compulsive “people-watcher”, taking mental note of the way people relate to each other, along with their mannerisms, gestures, traits and characterists.

Six minutes into Shane Meadows’ 1997 movie TwentyFourSeven, Bob Hoskins, narrating as the character Darcy, makes this sadly only-too-topical point:

"The lads and the people in this town have been living in the same day their whole lives. None of them is singularly strong enough to break away and say: Wait a minute, there must be something more than this! No one. That’s why nothing ever changes."

The character Darcy, along with his real-life counterparts, are the die-hards of society: they stand up, often ignoring cynicism, scorn and derision, and they try to make a difference. Some fall short of achieving what they set out to do … but at least they get off their ass and try!

The dialogue I’ve quoted from TwentyFourSeven is so apt for the guys who I used to see every day. They sat around on walls near their homes, drank and smoked long into the night. These weren’t kids, but they still acted the same way they did when they were twelve-years-old, hanging around the streets, sitting on walls, peddling around the streets on their bicycles and making ramps out of loose planks and bricks to jump over, just like they probably remember seeing the stunt riders Evel Knievel and Eddie Kidd do on TV. My guess is that if I went back to that street … they’d probably still be there … doing the exact same things … talking about the same stuff … admiring and comparing their Anti-Social Behavior Orders (ASBOs) … living the same day since their early teens. Where I grew up, they’re called “charvers”. Other parts of Britain would call them “chavs” or “chavas”, but it all means the same. Other countries will no doubt have their own derogatory terms.

Like everyone else, they had their dark side. Get on the wrong side of them and they would hold a grudge against you for the rest of their life. There was no forgiveness in them.

My inspiration for the character came when I suddenly thought: what if a guy like that came back to the city holding an almighty grudge against a group who’d wronged him ...

From that single idea, Lenny Durning came to life in my imagination.