| Welcome to |
Jerome's Website!
Homepage
Profile
Music
Roles
Jerome1
Jerome2
Jerome3
Jerome4
Jerome5
Rome on Rome
The nearest town, Sevenoaks, was not only 7 miles away but also, as far as I was concerned, very boring.
Very boring, that is in comparison to the seemingly endless woodland and fields that I had access to from my back garden.
As soon as I got home from school off I'd go into the woods, often with my brother and sisiter, exploring, making camps, swinging from tress or just generally hanging out.
We never had much money but we were lucky enough to get a lovely piece of land very cheaply from a relative.
The house on the land, however, was a bit of a wreck so we had to pull together as a family and make it habitable.
We grew our own vegetables and had to split 120 logs a week for out wood-burning stoves (there was no central heating).
My Mother is a big animal lover and we would regularly be looking after all sorts of sick and injured animals before releasing them into the wild.
At school I was never really interested in the academic side of things and would only really respond to subjects where I took a liking to the teacher.
Basically, if they didn't make it interesting, I tended not to be interested. School was definately worth it though for all the sport I got to play and all the friends I got to make.
At 17, after being in a school production of "Charley's Aunt" and also a local youth production of "The Crucible" I decided that acting was definately worth having a crack at, for a couple of reasons; firstly because I liked the feeling of pretending to be someone else on stage in front of an audience, and secondly, it gave me a new-found confidence in myself - people showed more interest in me than they had before
.....OK, all right then! Girls showed more interest in me than they had before, and at the time that alone seemed a good enough reason for giving it a go!
So I jacked in my English A Level, which wasn't going anywhere anyway, took a year off to travel and rebel, and then at 18 I went up to London to start a 3 year acting course at the Central School of Speech and Drama in Swiss Cottage.
It was, needless to say, one of the most exciting periods of my life and I wouldn't have swapped if for anything....but as my time in London wore on I started to realise just how lucky I had been as a child to have the natural world at my doorstep.
I had taken it all very much for granted at the time; the countryside was very much a part of me and me of it, at least that's what I now increasingly know to be true.
Whenever I get the chance now I try to get away to a place of natural beauty; it helps me to reconnect with my true self, although in my heart I know I don't have to leave town to do that, it just makes it easier.
And it's not just places, of course, that help me to connect.....people, stars, sounds of animals, animal smells, smelly people, sounds of animals making smells...well I had to say that didn't I 'cause I was getting far too spiritual and Robson would've got really annoyed with me if I'd started getting heavy with you and going on about dolphins etc !
That'll all have to to wait for the next time! Nice chatting to you though.
Love Rome