Playwright Bernard Farrell was 'outed' as a poet by a teacher who sensed his extracurricular activities.

I was born in1941. We lived in Sandycove so my first school was the Harold School in Glasthule and I have gorgeous memories of it. I always feel it was warm and happy and full of concerts and Chinese lanterns and treats, but most of all I remember it for a teacher called Miss Mohan and she was the first girl I ever fell in love with. I can still see her.

I remember the perfume she used to wear and she used to walk around in very high-heeled shoes and she always had the cardigan, not worn, but draped across her shoulders. I can see her up at the top of the class sitting on a high stool talking to us. I couldn't take my eyes off her and any time she spoke to me I used to absolutely melt.

I was an altar boy at the time and I remember one day she asked me the name of the sacristan in the church. I didn't know the meaning of the word and I had to ask her and I was never more humiliated in my life - because I desperately wanted her to fall in love with me and I really thought I was messing it up.

I left her to go to Monkstown Park, the Christian Brothers college. I remember we were told it was never CBS, it was always Christian Brothers College. I went into fifth class there. It was a very formal fee-paying school. We all had to wear the uniform, with cap. It wasn't a school I would gracefully have gone into in financial terms. My parents made quite a few sacrifices to send me there.

Some teachers I got on really well with and I loved the sense of sports in the school. I loved rugby and I played a bit for the school and I loved running. I was a very good half-miler so I ran for the school as well. I also loved the music society.

They did a Gilbert and Sullivan musical every year and whoever was picked to play the three little maids from school was

always given a shocking time for the next year. In those days the guys had to dress up as girls and at that particular age for fellas that was quite a humiliation, when most of the guys were playing rugby, cricket or tennis.

There was a rule in the school that you weren't allowed to play soccer. In fact if you were caught dribbling the rugby ball you could very well lose your half day.

Some of the teachers I liked very much, some I liked less. I didn't really fit in very much with the curriculum. I was always bucking the system. In English class we did Charles Lamb and Thackeray and at home I was reading bits of Joyce and Flann O'Brien, Steinbeck and Salinger and I couldn't understand why we weren't reading exciting books and why we were still locked into this slightly colonial curriculum. I fought hard against it mentally.

I do remember this teacher of mine I loved greatly, Brother O'Mahony, saying to me out of the blue one day: "Bernard do you ever write poetry?" Now I never gave any indication in my life at school that I ever wrote anything in a creative way, but I was actually writing poetry and short stories at the time. I don't know how he clicked on to that.

Every month, on a Friday, we had to walk down to St Patrick's Church in Monkstown for the sodality. About 250 were sent and 150 used to arrive, because right across the road from us was the Sacred Heart convent.

All the girls waited until the fellas from Monkstown Park were passing. Most of the guys used to drift in and there was always a terrible to-do when we got back. Eventually they used to take our names as we went into church, but there were a couple of girls I did really like, so, from time to time, I still drifted in myself.

In conversation with Olivia Kelly