Thread 18: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

Hello all. I've simplified the opening post as I don't think we need to keep reposting all the links, timelines and so on at this stage of proceedings.

The Observer's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...
First thread: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
Links to threads 2-16, the other 20 Observer articles and videos to date, Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement, our timeline and sources can all be accessed in the OP and first few posts of Thread 17: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5403285-thread-17-to-feel-disappointed-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

New posters joining us in the genuine spirit of our civil discourse are welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer exposé items before posting.
To all - Please be extremely cautious when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no direct connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea. Please do not engage with drive-by scolders who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail. Avoid @'ing and quoting them as - from experience - this will only encourage them back to the threads. We have done amazingly well together for 17 very interesting, very serious and very silly threads so far. I can't be here as much as I'd like so all help with keeping our discussion walking along in our usual reasonable and respectful fashion is very welcome.

Now three months in, if these threads could wear slogan t-shirts they would be Mark Twain's often misquoted 'The report of my death was an exaggeration'. Applications in writing from correspondents seeking supply parcels of fudge and cider will be tolerated.

Here we are again
Disappointed as can be
All good pals and jolly good company
Strolling round the path
Happy on a spree
All good pals and jolly good company

Never mind the weather, never mind the rain
Now that we're together, whoops we go again!
Whoops, we go again
La-di-da-di-da, la-di-da-di-dee
All good pals and jolly good company

Keep to the path. No saltiness. May the fudge and cider be with you.

I loved Kes too! I need to rewatch it at some point. I also loved Withnail and I and would like to rewatch it too, but wonder what I’d think of it on a second watch.

'The film is more optimistic than people consider': Why the poignant Kes is Britain's greatest coming-of-age story

Me too @Thefastandthecurious5 I would like to watch Kes again, at the moment I'm only just keeping up with what is going on with all the posts. There's been so many interesting topics discussed, I have had thoughts on some of them. I did get a bit worried when @Uricon2 took delivery of TSP :)

@Uricon2 love it. This different Anon couldn't help herself having been inspired by yours 😀

Hwaet! Again I raise the red-cupped horn,
Not in cheer but in charred remembrance—
Once Smotyn, fleece-bright, fleet-footed,
Now sleeps where the moss grows thick as lies.

So let us go, mourners and mythmakers,
Beyond Yr Wyddfa, beyond forgetting,
To sing Smotyn’s name on every fell—
A wool-white soul, baaaa-rd among beasts.

Hey! Been here since thread one. Different username. I've been thinking. Did they buy a rental house/flat? Their mortgage was huge as flagged previously when they lost the barn house. That sounds to me like people who remortgaged to buy a rental property. It was really common around the 2000s to do that. I know several people who did this using equity in their home. I know there was the land in France but that was quite cheap. Buy to let was what a lot of people did on cheap mortgages. Lenders not as strict pre banking crash. If they lost their main home it probably didn't impact any buy to let and would have provided income to supplement them. I'm not sure how you'd look this up. You can look things up on the land registry freely but I don't know if you can search by owner just by property. But some one who works with the register would know.
I feel a bit mean suggesting this. But to me it does seem a logical explanation for the size of their mortgage. Of course if this is true then it would be quite a big thing to uncover. I don't have any insider knowledge so please don't PM me. Just something I was thinking as I dip in and out of these threads. That's why I posted. I often leave mumsnet and rejoin but been a user for 18 years.

It could be possible @Camebackformore I don't think you can find property by someone's name, don't people sometimes buy rental accommodation for student children ? I am purely speculating.

Hmmm, very interesting!

Property is cheaper in Wales and Midlands.
They wouldn't need part time jobs if they had rental property. Does also explain the low hours they both worked pre-TSP. I'm a bit younger than them but a lot of my fairly average 60+ friends did buy to let using the income from the houses they owned that rapidly increased in value in early-mid 2000s. A lot of people did it as 'pensions'.

Oh that is so, so good!

A conveyancer can look up people I think, but probably not unless they are legally meant to. So we probably need a dodgy one!

Almost as good as Heaney's version!

So. The Spear-Danes in days gone by
and the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.
There was Shield Sheafson,
scourge of many tribes,
a wrecker of mead-benches,
rampaging among foes.
This terror of the hall-troops had come far.
A foundling to start with,
he would flourish later on as his powers waxed
and his worth was proved.
In the end each clan on the outlying coasts beyond the whale-road
had to yield to him and begin to pay tribute.
That was one good king.

Just think.

Now less than a year until the release of On Winter Hill.

Can.t wait!

Good to see that some booksellers are shifting TSP to the fiction section!

(1) Instagram

Show the way .... so good but that is an indie, we still have the big sellers with all the irritating slogans. I know we always mention the 'unflinchingly' but the one I always see is: “A real-life story about triumph over adversity and the healing power of nature My Weekly”
Love the Moaning Myrtle reference in the comments, hadn't thought of that.

I wonder whether they just extended and extended the mortgage to keep funding a quality of life that meant they didn't have to work (much).

And my other wondering was - was Sal told to 'sex up' the book maybe? There's quite a lot of emphasis at the moment (certainly in my field of fiction) on 'spicy sells' and readers wanting more sex or alluded-to sex in their reading, and I did wonder whether the 'girls and massage' section might have been stuck in afterwards if Sal was asked to make it sexier. Not entirely her fault, and might account for why the writing is so different - it was an insert rather than written at the same time as the rest.

Of course she's such a dreadful writer that it's really hard to tell. But the fact the books have sold so well is also an indictment on the reading public and their love for nice simple books that don't really tell you anything new or teach you anything, and are written in an easy-read sort of format.

Unfortunately there’s a stack of both TSP and TWS still in the nature writing section in my local Waterstones. I wonder if I could get away with moving them one by one to the fiction section.

Oh I know what you mean ... but maybe it's good there is a stack - but I suppose you'd have to count them regularly to see if it is the same ones, or tag them, but even I'm not quite that 'sad'!

You (more than anyone?) would understand my agitation that, in my Waterstones, they are in the Local section. 😡

Like you, I wanted to surreptitiously relocate the offending objects - but didn't have the courage. However, my location of choice would be Fantasy.

I think you are probably right @Vroomfondleswaistcoat they were claiming tax credits, if this is to be believed, Salray says they keep the claim, by not telling the tax credit people about the change of address, instead forwarding the mail to Month's brothers address, this is is going by what has been written by Salray in TSP.

I do like the idea that they had a secret rental accommodation, but realise that it is probably unlikely. I have always wondered if the French property was the failed investment, if Moth and brother were supposed to do up the French properties for own use for holidays and letting to others, a place with a pool rents for good money in the holiday season.

If the brother has considerably more money, he could walk away from the project, the properties are not hugely valuable. It must have cost money to go back and forth to France and if they were trying to keep up with the brother. I can quite imagine Salray embezzling money to keep up a lifestyle.

TSP: And who wants a fifty-year-old woman whose work history for the last twenty years has been self-employment? .......... I would have to retrain. But even then, who would want to employ a fifty-year-old newly qualified woman when they could have the equivalent twenty-three-year-old?

In the UK, this means you have about 17 years of work before you get the state pension. So it is worth employing someone. Of course, we know she was in employment at the Abersoch hotel, and then for Mr Hemmings.

Having seen your post above about OWH @izzywizzyletsgetbizzywynthomas I had a little look around on Penguin and Waterstones to see if there were any significant changes to the sales pitches and noticed a B Cole had left a review of TSP on 7/11/2018
"Beautiful, thought provoking and inspirational. Just love this book. Ray and Moth have every reason to feel angry and bitter. Instead their warmth and humour, not to mention their heartbreaking honesty touched me in a way that I was not expecting. Truly an inspirational and uplifting story. Very much deserving of being a Sunday Times bestseller.”

The Bill Cole? It has to be doesn’t it? Too much of a coincidence otherwise.

Has to be BC @HatStickBoots , surely.

Forgetting the 'heartbreaking honesty' because noone knew at that time, the words "warmth and humour' make me feel I'm reading a different book.

I really do feel for him. What a wake up call that must have been when he learned the truth! Do you have copies of the second and third book yet @Uricon2 ?

Dear God no! 😂I'm struggling enough with the first magnum 'opeless. Anyway, I'm not paying more than 60p and I consider that 59p too much.

Seriously, I'm keeping an eye open and will probably succumb, unless actually doing the walk myself as some sort of penance for giving up is an option. I've decided to review each "part" when completed instead of ranting on about everything that annoys me as I read it, otherwise @DisappointedReader will be starting a thread a day.

I even had to go back to Walking Away and read the bit where Sue A has pulled a muscle and has a strange crab like gait but is persevering and Simon is getting filthy looks from other walkers as with his stick he looks like he's 'driving the poor creature to market'.

Laughed out loud at that. Clearly I don't have a TSP sense of humour.

I didn’t find TSP funny either. It was pulling me too much in the sympathy direction. I’m guessing that the attempts at humour were the way she viewed other people and turned them into laughing stocks. When she was belittling herself and bitching about her peeling nose, the radio that Moth had bought and talking about her hammered toes.. I didn’t laugh… it could have been an attempt at humour…. But I sympathised and pitied.
Simon of course is very witty. I laughed out loud a lot and had to read passages to my partner.