Thread 3: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

The Observer The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5368194-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?^

Thread 2 Thread 2. To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

I'm not posting anything to do with their family unless Walker has mentioned it.

So in 2003, presumed date of moving to Wales the children would have been teenagers.

Though according to AI Google search, they had lived in Wales for 30 years before losing the house in 2013, which doesn't match well for the sale in 2011 - Escape to the Country. And it also makes no sense.

Oops sorry @AWanderingFool

I hope they get it in a way. I'm sure it will be tempting to do a 'clap back' interview to cry about how hurt and wronged they are.

If it is true that they are taking legal advice (hope that any lawyer is taking payment up front) then I would expect that advice to consist of "shut the f.... up". Any attempt to explain this now is simply going to send people runng for new lines of investigation. And potentially now leave them open to legal action if they defame anyone.

"When our friends were on foreign holidays, we were reroofing the barn".

So what? People have different lifestyles/different amounts of money. If they didn't want to spend time and money reroofing a barn, maybe they shouldn't have taken on a farm.

Did they actually know anything about farming? What were they doing in the years before they turned up in N Wales?

Could you or someone please reshare the link to this? I missed this one and can't find it.

I appreciate that, and I agree that we shouldn't, but SW has mentioned the fact that children exist and this might bear it out.

Obviously I'm not giving names! But I can edit it further if people think it best.

She stole it over a number of years, and I guess they were living beyond their means - in the early 2000s he was head gardener at a small National Trust property (albeit beautiful with a lovely cottage style garden), which possibly isn’t that well paid and she was a bookkeeper also probably not especially well paid. They had a holiday let, but that, being away from the coast would be very seasonal, probably renting for 4 months of the year. And combine this with a large mortgage, children and animals perhaps they were a bit short. Nice trusting employer and a dishonest mentality and I can see how she stole £64,000.

I'm struggling to find one redeeming feature between the pair of them. In the book I disliked the way she was so ungrateful to the friend who housed them over the winter, and now having found out about the stealing I think she is basically just inherently dishonest.

This was interesting P102 TSP:

”When you tell a story the first person you must convince is yourself; if you can make yourself believe it’s true then everyone else will follow”

“Our story was born out of self-protection…We invented a lie that was more palatable. What was the difference between the two stories? ..everything ‘sold’ ….

“The more we repeated the lie, the less we felt the grief. If we told ourself the lie for long enough…Maybe I was doing that with Moth’s illness too, or did I genuinely believe the doctor had made a mistake?”

Re living in Wales and the work, I am going to presume that the Observer will have a follow up on Sunday. Some vague suggestions are 1997 for arrival in Wales. Can't link.

However I do think it's important that the arrival date of the move to Wales is established.

There are no court dates because the embezzlement was paid before the session.

That is interesting.

“Our story was born out of self-protection…We invented a lie that was more palatable. What was the difference between the two stories?

What ‘story’ is she referring to in this bit above though?

@AWanderingFool

Have covered the embezzlement discovery and loan to property repossession period here.

Sources: All from The Observer article, plus book prize draw substantiated on The Smallholders Forum and archived Gangani Press website

2008 (Hemmings says that one day in 2008) Martin looked at the company bank balance and realised that Walker had failed to deposit a large sum of cash.
2008 A few days after the discovery, Walker turned up at her home, offering to pay back the money, sobbing: ‘I’ve even had to sell my mother’s wedding dress to do this,’ They allowed Walker to repay the £9,000 and moved on with their lives
2008 date unknown Hemmings discover £55k more has gone missing over the previous years.
2008 SW arrested, disappears overnight.
2008 “James"* loan of £100k at 18% annual interest with Pen y Maes property as security
Months later “James” business goes bust
2010 “James” loan transferred to two men he owed money to
2011-14 Public records show that there were at least five county court judgements against the Walkers.
2012 The two men take Walkers to court
2012 During the case James filed a witness statement in which he told the court that “the purpose of the loan is clear: it was required to settle a criminal allegation made against Mrs Walker”.
2012 The court ruled that the Walkers had to repay the debt – which with interest now exceeded £150,000.
2012 Less than 2 months after the judgement Sally and Tim started their own company, Gangani Publishing. It only ever published one novel, How Not to Dal dy Dir (Stand Firm), written by an unknown writer called Izzy Wyn-Thomas. This was used as a vehicle to raffle their property in a prize draw!
2012 Martin Hemmings dies
2013 Pen y Maes property reposessed
2016 “James” dies
2016 Maxine Farrimond buys Pen y Maes. At that time she is received a stream of unpaid bills, credit cards and a speeding fine as well as letters from debt collection agencies.
2018 The Salt Path published

*Quote marks as widow asked The Observer not to use their real names.

@Molecule was that small National Trust property in Wales?

There’s a similar passage near the beginning of The Wild Silence, where Moth tells R the ‘cover story’ he’s telling his school-leaver fellow students about why a man in his 50s decided to go to university.

March 2012: Gangani Publishing Ltd set up with TW as Director and TW and SW as joint shareholders. Dissolved July 2013. Source: Companies House. Gangani published a book by Izzy Wyn-Thomas (we think SW) called How Not to Dal dy Dir. Those who bought the book were told it meant that they were entered into a prize draw to win TW & SW's house in Wales. Source: The Observer and the Gangani Publishing website.
Questions: There was a Tim Scott on the Gangani website- was that TW? Was How Not to Dal dy Dir the basis for The Salt Path? What happened with the prize draw? Was it in fact just a drawer in TW and SW's kitchen dresser?

@AWanderingFool

Disabled and sick people are allowed to look good in photos taken for publicity and media - or any! - purpose.

I have chronic severe pain daily, but you wouldn’t know it from the photos in my business marketing.

Please don’t use this situation to inadvertently reinforce the trope that if you don’t look sick you must be faking it.

What cover story does he use there?

@DisappointedReader 😂😂 about the draw/drawer

Exactly.
It's a bit grim feeling that we have to go everywhere in a dressing gown with unbrushed hair or people won't believe we are struggling

Re Tim/Moth's job at Plas yn Rhiw, he is mentioned on wikipedia, but when I looked at the source, I couldn't actually see him there. I don't understand how the editing works, but maybe someone else does.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plas_yn_Rhiw

Thanks @HolyPond

Why on earth would he need a cover story? Back in the Cretaceous when I was at university, mature students were quite usual, not in huge numbers perhaps but I am sure much more so in recent years.

Tim Walker, head gardener of the manor garden, boasts: "It's the only organic National Trust garden in Wales, and one of only three throughout England and Wales – although the other two, Trengwainton, near Penzance, and Snowshill Manor, in Gloucestershire, haven't got the same pedigree as Plas".[8]

He's there:

Tim Walker, head gardener of the manor garden, boasts: "It's the only organic National Trust garden in Wales, and one of only three throughout England and Wales – although the other two, Trengwainton, near Penzance, and Snowshill Manor, in Gloucestershire, haven't got the same pedigree as Plas".[8]

Don't ask me to help with the timeline. I'm still feeling like a daft banana for mucking up trying to work out the date of when Raynor/Sally was likely born in relation to when her parents got married. I was out in my estimations by two decades.

I'm trying to think of a remixed version of Raynor/Sally.

Rally?
Salnor?
Raysa?

Probably not Raysa though because it sounds too close to Raisa, (As in Gorbacheva) and being a viable nom de plume for her to use.

I'm looking forward to at some point in the future seeing and reading the exposé film and book that will be made about the original film and the book.

The publishers and film company could make double their money. Obviously Channel 5 will get in there first, and what actress will take on playing Gillian Anderson playing Raynor Winn?

I'm exhausted thinking about it.

Actually, it's here
Tim came to the garden ten years ago. He was living in Staffordshire with his wife Sally and their two young children xxxx and xxxx and working for the family business as a master plasterer, but had a degree in botany. Law clerk Sally was originally from Gwynedd. It was when xxxx one day managed to get out of the house and down the road on his own that they decided they wanted to live somewhere safer for children. Within three weeks Tim had resigned from work, their house quickly sold, and they moved to a rented house near Criccieth to begin their new life, before finding Pen y Maes near Rhoslan, the dilapidated house they were looking for, so that they could "restore a bit of rural Wales". It was, says Tim, "a life-changing experience to restore a house as a key piece of history."

At about the same time he went to the gardens at Plas yn Rhiw and met Paul Lewis, The National Trust warden for the area, and did some work identifying tree plots. He also met Mrs Dick, the custodian at the time, and started volunteering in the garden. Then a few months later the gardener Robin Thomas retired and "it was suggested by someone in the Trust that I apply for the job, and I got it in 1995."
https://archive.ph/6KXzq