School Days

Jane enjoyed her South London schooldays, worked hard, and made many friends. She did well in her studies gaining pleasing school reports. She developed an interest in dance, appearing on stage, pre-school, as one of a troupe of dancing jelly-babies in Margaret Tarrant’s School of Dancing when she was three.

Jane, right, as a dancing jelly-baby.

While at primary school she was a Brownie and, later, a Girl Guide. She played the recorder and had an interest in music. When she gained a place at secondary school in 1985. at the age of eleven, she had already developed her interest in poetry and drama. Over the years she sat several LAMDA verse-speaking and acting exams, gaining high marks.

She was an acting member of the Croydon Youth Theatre (CYTO), made many friends there, and gained good notices in the Croydon Advertiser for her ‘appealing’ performance as the Gaoler’s Daughter in Toad of Toad Hall. She appeared as Betty Parris in their production of Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.

CYTO cast of The Crucible, Jane centre.

Jane was very happy at secondary school. She was fully involved in school life and went on many school trips abroad: France, Holland, Austria as well as trips nearer home: theatre visits, art galleries, Penshurst Place, the British Museum. Her P.E. teacher recalls ‘the triumph in Jane’s eyes’ when she managed a difficult ski run on a slope in Austria. Jane also took part in a student exchange with a pen-pal in France.

At the British Museum.

In 1988 we spent two memorable weeks in Kilkee, in County Clare, relishing the wild beauty of the land and seascapes. Kilkee was their paternal grandfather’s birthplace and he enjoyed showing us around. Jane was fascinated that Charlotte Bronte had spent her honeymoon there in 1854.

Cliffs of Moher, County Clare

Full of energy, Jane managed to write her 40,000 word novel while simultaneously doing well in all her GCSEs. In her Drama GCSE she gained a distinction for her performance as Verity Taylor in Olwen Wymark’s  Find Me.  Apparently she was remarkably convincing as the troubled, passionate teenage heroine – completely unlike the way she was at home (thankfully!).

Jane as Verity in Find Me.