‘There are early photographs of me sitting at my father's Hammond organ. I skipped the piano and learned in the typical melody-only clubstyle without bass clef. I came to the classical tradition at high school, when a peer invited me to apply for the choir of boys and men at Christ Church, North Shields. The director, Russell Missin, a retired cathedral organist, was very gracious in letting me explore the III/35 organ with my jaunty, secular repertoire. I became fascinated in the pipe organ and began lessons with him, later becoming organ scholar then assistant organist. As the local diocesan organ adviser, Russell took me to an open day at Harrisons’ Hawthorn Terrace workshop when I was 13, sowing the seeds for a career in organ building.

I became an apprentice at Harrisons in 1994, aged 16, embarking on a daunting daily commute that started at 5am. I was taken under the wing of head voicer Peter Hopps who, like me, had knocked on the door of Harrisons asking for a job at 15. I was tuning at local churches in and around Durham from the age of 18; at 22 I took on the role of London tuner. I doubled this up with the post of assistant organist at St Margaret's, Lee, which, in coming with bungalow, solved a potential accommodation crisis.

It was (and still is) a huge privilege to work on organs such as at Westminster Abbey, the Royal Festival Hall (RFH) and Southwark Cathedral, and in preparation for events of national importance. I tuned the organ and was on standby for the Queen Mother's funeral, Charles and Camilla's blessing and William and Kate's wedding. Attending these kind of events was massively formative for me, a musician with no formal training – I witnessed some of the world's greatest church musicians close at hand. I rarely had to intervene; but at one RFH recital by Jane Parker-Smith, I had to walk on stage in front of 2,000 people and fathom out the cause of a cypher, leaving William McVicker to impromptu monologue on stage. The repair took 15 minutes, but felt like a month.

While London tuner, I kept my hand in at voicing, working on St Mary Redcliffe, Stockholm City Hall and Cirencester Parish Church. When I became head voicer, I was responsible for the musical side of many projects, including Exeter and Canterbury cathedrals, King's College, Cambridge, and York Minster.

At Harrisons we're a team of 53. I can't fulfil my role without the leatherwork, woodwork, metalwork and electronics specialists. While we have several organists in our team, many are craftspeople with little interest in the organ, church music or churches, but who take huge pride in their work and in working in some of the UK's finest buildings. Our recent project in Greenwich, Connecticut required our team to be on site for 12 weeks, and for me to stay a further nine weeks voicing. The organ took up four and a half shipping containers. Shutting the doors on a container is always a heart-stopping moment. In 1908, a Harrison organ bound for Nigeria sank in Lagos harbour!

Sadly, as the Church of England contracts, so does organ building. At a time when a congregation is struggling to keep their church watertight, Harrisons often deliver news that an organ restoration is going to be expensive. My advice to our customers is to try and restore their organ before it falls silent. Few will be enthused to raise money for an instrument which they can't hear, or remember hearing.

Alongside my work at Harrisons I am director of music at St Michael & All Angels, Croydon and the choir Amici Coro. Today, everything is on tap 24/7. As a chorister over 30 years ago, life was so much simpler. Sundays were sacrosanct. People no longer appear as committed to weekly church music, and the pandemic has exacerbated this. Youngsters’ exposure to the organ outside private schools is limited. Raising the instrument's profile is tricky, but there are some wonderful initiatives, like the recent TV showing of ‘Organ Stops: Saving the King of Instruments’ and the organ installation at London Bridge station.

As a member of the board of the International Society of Organ Builders and chairman ofthe Institute of British Organ Building, I get a rolling international overview of organ building. At Harrisons we have five apprentices aged 16 to early 30s, who I hope will help safeguard the future of this wonderful instrument.