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

On Radio 4, she said it was someone who got to know the couple after the book had become a success. So I'm guessing someone local to them in Cornwall who noticed that Moth always looks the picture of health.

In fact, if you look at all the pictures of him in all the newspaper stories he's been in, there isn't a single one where he even looks peaky. You could use him in adverts for health supplements for the aged - the man is positively radiating vitality.

I do think the story of the walk was generally true and they walked most of it.

but the trouble with one pretty big lie is that no one else knows what else to believe.

Yes, it was just a joke, referencing that one of the obvious options is for the Walkers to make a hefty donation as a mea culpa.

I"m never comfortable with comments like this.

I accept that its clear he doesn't have CBD.

But I also think it is important to never assume someone's health based on snapshots of their life.

I've just spent two busy hours at a school event, looking like "nothing was wrong with me"

Except underneath that I could feel my symptoms getting worse and worse and now I am home my arms are so weak I can barely hold my phone to type.

Fluctuating symptoms can mean noone except the people who live with us truly understand our condition.

unless my symptoms are at the most extreme (ie I need hospital admission) they don't affect my gait or outward appearance at all

I do wonder whether in the new book Raynor is on her own because a) one of them realised that it was stretching credulity to say Moth could manage another walk or b) Moth said “fuck off, Sally, I’m not walking one step further and that’s final. I’m staying in a comfy bed with Netflix and JustEat”?

Phew, caught up with the discussion. I commented on the initial thread about how it was entirely possible that no one locally in NW Wales would have realised for so long that the Walkers were the same as the Winns and so perhaps not made the connection. I've had a look today on the website of the North Wales Daily Post and there's nothing at all on the story. I then checked the BBC Cymru news website and the local Welsh language newspapers. Again, nothing.

I read a lot, but until the scandal broke I had no idea what the Winns looked like. Because I didn't really like the book (or her tbh as the book went on) I wasn't fussed about following her via events or social media, and I very rarely watch live TV, so hadn't seen her on the One Show. I'd heard her on the radio being interviewed but her voice then put me off her even further (shallow). Same with the film - I'd seen the publicity clips of Gillian Anderson & Jason Isaacs but hadn't seen any pics of her or Moth with them.

It's interesting that the suggestion is that the tip off came from someone who knew them in Cornwall. I do wonder how long Ros Hemmings had realised before the journalist got in touch with her. What a horrible position to be in and yes, she has been v dignified considering what she went through with the Walkers.

It was a family owned estate agent and surveyor.I think the NDA is unusual. I'm not sure I'd have signed one if I were the Hemmings, but then £64K is a lot to wave goodbye too (minus the £9K she'd repayed through wedding dress etc sales)

I know enough about small towns, Welsh and otherwise to know that Sally would have been an absolute pariah after conviction, even with no gaol sentence.

Going to say this for the umpteenth time on these threads - PIP cannot be claimed for "conditons" - it can only be claimed on impacts of conditions. So someone who can walk a long distance footpath or three is certainly not going to be able to claim.You also need an address, medical evidence and an assessment. The chances of him getting PIP previously are very low - especially since there are three books apparently saying he just needs to go for a walk to recover. Pretty sure the DWP will have heard of them.

Whether he now legitimately qualifies for claiming is an entirely different matter - he may or may not as nobody knows his medical condition right now.

My DF had a neurological condition, one of those that other medical staff have rarely heard of and we had to constantly explain. Once he was diagnosed, he was just discharged back into the care of the GP since there was nothing that really could be done other than managing the symptoms. He never saw a neuro consultant again in the remaining eight years of his life, and actually he rarely saw the GP either, we just got on with looking after him, so I can believe that no one really took very much notice of what was happening with Tim Walker (although that doesn’t explain why the charity didn’t appear to have noticed).

Also, she was charging for charity event appearances. Someone posted about a Crisis event with a reading of TSP and then some networking, £50+ tickets, and that they assumed RW/SW came along to add their support for the charity, but found out when it was cancelled that RW was going to be paid!

I know some celebs get paid for charity appearances, but RW would have been there marketing her book, plus it would have benefited the image she was projecting as a supporter of homeless people, and the whole thing would have publicised her books and the film, through comms about the event itself and in any press it generated.

I do get this, and I’m very sorry to read about your health struggles. However, it’s not a like for like situation - someone with CBD might have good days and bad days, but even on a good day they would have visible signs of illness, certainly after 18 years. I suppose that’s why the Observer and the 8 or 9 experts were so comfortable to cast so much doubt - I wonder whether you’d expect a sufferer to reach a point where you actually couldn’t photograph them without it being visible from their posture that they had serious mobility issues? For example you’d expect them to be confined to a wheelchair. And I suppose there’s another question over the cognitive decline - Moth/Tim is still able to eg chat to Jason Isaacs, he’s not showing much sign of cognitive decline, and after a certain amount of time that becomes less and less feasible?

The 'Selling my mother's wedding dress" turn up is the most bizarre of all these shenanigans.

Or one of the most bizarre. I lose track.

I have known one person in my life to have reworn a wedding dress and that was her own grandmother's wedding dress.

It was pointed out on the previous thread by other posters that one of the reasons Tim and Sally got away with this for so long is that no one felt able to say that for eighteen years he's looked pretty okay for someone with a terminal degenerative illness.

That would be a possibility if Book 3 didn’t specifically mention seeing a consultant neurologist and having scans showing first deterioration and then, post-walk, a “normal” brain. She’s not just claiming he was diagnosed and sent away, she’s claiming that there were follow-ups etc culminating in medical proof of improvement.

I don't think second hand wedding dresses fetch much money at all unless they are associated with a celebrity.

Most people who want to get rid of their wedding dress gift it to a charity shop.

😡😡😡 ( - unless I m wrong to be so cynical and this is actually true of course)

I'm perhaps getting too hung up on the wedding dress thing but let's just say, according to previous research, Sally was born in 1962 to a reasonably working/middle class family in Melton Mowbray.

Take twenty or twenty two or twenty four or twenty six years off that and her parents would have married (at least at the average age of her mother) just before or during WW2.

Where's the stupendous wedding frock?

I don't think she had a wedding dress as such. If it's the couple who married in 1954, the bride wore "a powder-blue costume, a string of pearls... and carried pink roses and ferns." The bridesmaid wore a grey two-piece suit, according to the Grantham Journal in April. 🙂

They were an estate agents - Yale & Hemmings of Pwllheli. They were incorporated as a company in 2001 and operated until Martin Hemmings died in 2012. I don't how they were viewed locally, but even if Sally did sort out their chaotic system (unlikely for a part time bookkeeper), that doesn't justify her stealing £64k.

She would have been better off just saying nothing in a way.

But then I guess they had to come up with something as to why Tim was A. looking so well and B. not actually dead!

Sally Walker must have thought this miracle improvement nonsense would explain why he wasn't nearing end of life and was instead just as healthy as he'd been years earlier.

The person that approached Chloe may well have seen him working on the farm, and never saw him on an off day, ever.

So, if it's the case, someone that knew them was suspicious because he never had a 'bad CBD day' over a number of years, then it's likely there's either nothing wrong with him, or if he does have something it's relative minor compared to CBD.

Ugh this makes me so mad, I really want to know - and I REALLY want everyone (else)* with CBD to get the truth

*Parenthesis referring to Timothy's maybe he really has it possibility, rather than suggesting I have it, I don't.

Though dFiL had quite an aggressive form of Parkinson's which CBD sounds similar to in some ways (loss of speech and movement, cognitive decline) and it was utterly heartbreaking. God rest his soul.

That sounds like my sort of book club! 😂

The wedding dress and its associated weeping is likely just as big a load of bollocks as everything else.

Oh, I've got my dates wrong. I was working out how much older than Sally her mother must be. I may be thick but that's why I'm honest.

Yes, here's the paper clipping for interest! 🙂