Joe O'Connor recalls happy, rugby-less schooldays at Blackrock College

I liked school - especially the beginning and the end. I started in St Joseph of Cluny Convent, Glenageary, Co Dublin, and then went to Willow Park before moving on to Blackrock College. I can remember my first day at school very clearly. My parents had cunningly sold the idea of school to me long before I started. If I was good, they told me, I'd be allowed to go to school. But, if I misbehaved, I'd have to be kept at home for another year. So, I was the only kid who wasn't crying on that first day. It took me more than a year to realise that my parents had been economical with the truth!

My first teacher, Mother Lawrence, was wonderful. The Montessori movement was just beginning in Ireland but she didn't believe in that sort of thing. Playing with plasticine or matching up shapes were not for her. She believed in the alphabet and numbers. But she did it in such an exciting way that she made it really interesting.

I see a direct line in my life between what I'm doing now back to that time. She inculcated in me a love of reading and writing and taught me what a wonderful thing books are. Making up stories, being creative and using the imagination is a phase all children go through - I just never came out the other side.

My happiest memories of senior school are of the couple of years coming up to Leaving Cert. That's when I began to make close friends. I only ever had four or five friends and our common bond was the fact that nobody in school liked us because we didn't play rugby. I broke my collarbone playing rugby at the age of 12 and that cured me of any ambition of becoming a rugby player. It's an incredibly violent sport - at least once a year someone is seriously injured. I had a lot of respect for the boys who were really good players but I found that some people on the second and third teams, who lacked real skill, were incredibly Nazi-ish in the way they herded up people to attend matches and cheer on the sidelines.

At 12.30 every day my friends and I would sit with our arses up against the radiator outside our classroom, watching people go out to play rugby - that in itself was character forming. It's a pity that kids feel they have to join in something they dislike.

I wasn't a great student. It was an unhappy time in the family and that probably affected my performance. Whereas in school I was a B or a C stream student - I got a C in Leaving Cert English - at UCD I graduated with a first-class degree.

I had a ball at university where I studied English and history. At this time of the year I suffer from a strange wistfulness. My apartment overlooks UCD and I can see the first years arriving. I'm so envious of them. I wish I could go through the whole experience again. I loved the social life and I took to the intellectual side far more than I thought I would. All I had to do was read what were to me fantastic books and come up with opinions on them. It was a great luxury.

After UCD I went to Oxford and started on a Ph D, but I spent a good deal of time writing short stories when I should have been researching. I decided to give up the Ph D and concentrate full-time on writing. I worked hard but spent a grim three years on the dole, getting rejection slip after rejection slip. It wasn't until my first novel was published in 1991 that I was able to support myself.

I think I'll be writing for the rest of my life - I don't want to do anything else. I've been very lucky but I'd never advise anyone to do give up a job or a course to become a writer - that's insane.

Joe O'Connor's new play The Weeping of Angels is running at the Gate Theatre.