A new start after 60: stuck in a hospital bed, I decided to retire. Now I’m a tap dancer

When he was 57, Stephen Walsh found himself in hospital with a stomach bleed from an ulcer. As he lay in bed recovering, he thought about his future. “‘You always had this vague idea that you’d retire early,’” he told himself at the time. “‘Well, I’m going to do it.’” Discharged from hospital, he gave his business partners three years’ notice. They had worked together at the General Electric Company, and after it was broken up in 1999, they launched their own training and consultancy business specialising in how to improve companies’ efficiency and outcomes. But his partners didn’t believe Walsh. “You’ll never retire,” they said. He had been a workaholic most of his life. After three years, he kept his word. He told his remaining business partner (the other had died): “I’m not doing the retirement thing where I come back for 20 days a year to get some pocket money. This is really and truly it. Only invite me back for the Christmas parties.” (He attends every year.) That was nine years ago. At first, Walsh did “all those projects around the house” that he’d ignored for 20 years. But after a while, “every day was like Groundhog Day ... I thought: ‘What do I do now?’” Always one to analyse a process, he considered the prospect of ageing – he wanted to stay young as long as possible, and be supported in his later years – and moved into a retirement community, Great Alne Park in Warwickshire, run by Inspired Villages. A new world opened up. He gave talks to fellow residents on astronomy, became active in the film club – and learned to tap dance. “Retirement once had that end-of-your-life feel,” he says. “Now you’re not hanging up your boots. In this case, I was getting new ones – with taps on them.” Many people “wait till it’s too late” to move, Walsh says, but he was 62 when he did it. “There were only 25 people here. Now there are 200. I’ve seen it grow. I’ve become part of that community.” Walsh grew up in Leigh, Greater Manchester. His dad drove a lorry for the National Coal Board; his mother worked in the textile industry. “Everybody around us was working class. Everyone in the row of houses knew each other. There was closeness with your neighbours.” Walsh with fellow tappers at Great Anne Park. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian He used to play on the slag heap behind his house, rode bicycles too fast down hills, climbed trees – and on Sunday afternoons watched musicals on TV with his sisters. “I loved watching the dancing,” he says. But he was no Billy Elliott. “I couldn’t dance at all. Trying to learn the waltz, after three steps, I’d get lost ... I’ve always had a mental block. I thought of myself as not a very good dancer.” After he moved into Great Alne Park, a fellow resident and former dance teacher started a tap club. Walsh went along to give moral support. He was 67. “I thought: ‘Why don’t I overcome my mental block and keep trying?’” Soon, he was working on his shim-shams and flaps, and buying his first pair of tap shoes. When they arrived, he immediately tried them out on his kitchen tiles. “We don’t want to break people,” he says. “There’s always one foot on the floor. No big jumps.” The troupe – Pat’s Happy Tappers, named after the class teacher and fellow resident – put on shows, and have taken part in a flash mob in Stratford-on-Avon. “Before you knew it, a whole group of us were dancing.” Tapping in front of an audience is “exciting and scary”, Walsh says. He is currently learning Anything Goes from the Cole Porter musical to perform for fellow residents. “We danced it [in rehearsal] and at the end we burst out laughing. It was pretty faultless. There’s that buzz of it coming together. When we’re coordinated, we hear it. It’s not a clatter – we’re tapping in time.” Tap is a replacement for work. “I have a sense of purpose. I feel valued. I have a sense of belonging. And I’m having fun.” In some ways, the retirement community reminds him of the one he took for granted growing up, and which he lost when he moved away to university. “It’s about finding common interests and helping each other when we need help, and supporting each other through loneliness.” As a boy, he enjoyed the benefits of a longstanding community. Now, he says, he is helping to create one.