My first day at St Patrick's Cathedral Grammar School, Dublin, was amazing. I felt comfortable at school for the first time in my life. I'd hated national school and dreaded having to go in every day.

After my first week there, I'd had an accident on my mother's bike and spent four weeks in hospital. When I returned to school I found it impossible to fit in and I'm afraid I made myself very unpleasant.

When the time came to go to secondary school, I was apprehensive but when I arrived in I immediately found that it was full of people like me. A boy who was to become my best friend was standing there holding a violin. It was like St Paul on the road to Damascus - suddenly I saw the light and my life changed completely. I was happy for the first time.

As a boy chorister at St Patrick's, I sang in all the cathedral services during the morning. Every morning after assembly, we choristers went off to choir practice instead of going into lessons. We then sang matins in the cathedral after which we took off our robes and reverted to being schoolboys until about 4pm when we went off again to the cathedral to evensong.

I don't believe that we missed out on the rest of our education at all. Statistics always proved that the highest marks went to the boy choristers. We were extremely disciplined and became good time-keepers. It was a great training and helped us to form good habits.

I adored being in the cathedral but at the time I didn't quite know why. It was only years later that I realised I was drawn to it because of its incredible atmosphere - the calm, the silence and the wonderful architecture. I still find just thinking of the cathedral extremely calming. Being a chorister gave you a great sense of performance - it made you want to perform. I enjoyed the incredible sense of ceremony in the liturgy. It was wonderful to feel so involved.

I loved the organ and dearly wanted to play, but didn't want to learn. When I was about fourteen, I took to climbing around the outside of a spiral staircase in the cathedral. Half way up, you could get into the organ gallery. It was an extremely dangerous thing to do and was forbidden.

I'd wait until the organist had left, climb up and blast away on the cords. People used to think I had permission and tourists would come up to congratulate me when I was leaving. One day the organist returned unexpectedly - he had forgotten his gloves. I thought I would be expelled. I was summoned to meet the headmaster and the dean of the cathedral. I was never so afraid in my life. Fortunately, my punishment was to be sent to formal organ lessons with the organist Sidney Greig and to Mary Ellison at the College of Music for piano classes. I adored Mary Ellison and, once my lessons had begun, I realised that this was the life I wanted to pursue.

Concert organist Peter Sweeney was in conversation with Yvonne Healy