Thread 6: 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 ...

Second article in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-whats-in-the-book-and-what-the-observer-has-found

Third item in the Observer
https://observer.co.uk/news/national/article/the-salt-path-the-truth-behind-the-blockbuster-book-video

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Thread 5 Thread 5: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

NB Please be careful when it comes to naming or implicating people who aren't in the public eye or have no connection to the story, especially where details are unclear or still emerging i.e. DON'T DO IT.

Keep on the path. No saltiness. Thank you.

New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the three Observer articles before posting.

The most successful, cleverest criminals, grifters etc, don’t get too greedy & don’t live it up with ill gotten gains in the Costa del Sol. They’re ‘one heist and done’ & blend with the middle class in Switzerland or somewhere quiet & launder.

@Merrymouse oh I agree- I’m not sure in books and films but I do know in music people who had to destroy large amounts of product after scandals when they owned catalogue and no you couldn’t get insurance - you can for tours though but on very specific and defined criteria ( not lack of sales etc)

@User14March yep we know someone who we swear may well be in that clan - ex accountant

Ok. This is genius :-)

Yes - but the consequences are worse for some than others. It’s different when there is literally no safety net.

The Walkers seem to have had other options, but were prevented from using them by pride/worn out good will/need to get out of Dodge.

I think a couple of them have been on these threads!

Love it 😀

there's now an idea that anyone can proofread, for example, which simply isn't true.

I once read a novel, part of a moderately successful series, in which the dialogue was punctuated wrongly throughout. It was profoundly irritating and distracting. I thought, even if you'd never been formally taught punctuation, if you've read a few novels you've seen how it's done.

And the author is old enough to have been taught punctuation at school, so I don't know how it got past her. But then she got the title of one of her characters wrong throughout the series.

I keep thinking of the publishers in Bridget Jones and Daniel, Perpetua and Brigit working on the Salt Path

I may have missed something but they had a shocking, clear terminal diagnosis ‘at a routine medical appointment that turned out to be anything but’ which precipitated TSP. Is it possible Ray panicked & internalised something that wasn’t said. Anyone unfortunate enough to be worried re: serious health condition will know it’s really wise to record the apt as your mind can go blank.

I thought they use spellcheck given the number of homophones I pick up these days

Agreed, but that's not the same as sticking your neck out publicly

pork pies

Some of their claims were certainly pie in the sky and I think a few flying pigs have recently been spotted too.

I think this is possible,, and for one book I would even have forgiven it. But she consolidates and elaborates on the story in more books and interviews even though it's evident the medical explanation had shifted.

What does 'friends and family called her Sally/Ray interchangeably' actually mean?

I've known some people who have used a different name at work to the one they were born with and which family call them, but I've never come across anybody who is called completely different names by the same people.

Isn't it more that they had other options/safety nets (including nearby family they never mention), but, for the purposes of dramatic tension in the memoir, remove the safety nets and instead present it as a stark choice between the 'safe, boring' choice of 'going into emergency council housing and getting jobs' and the 'free-spirited' one of walking the SWCP and living on small change and fresh air?

The decision to walk never makes a huge amount of sense, anyway, even as presented in the memoir -- hiding under the stairs while the bailiffs pound on the door, and happening to see an old guidebook to the coastal path which gives RW a brainwave? I mean, would they have walked a different path if a different book had been on top of the box? Started holding up petrol stations on a road trip if it had been the CD case of Thelma and Louise? Started a little teashop in the Cotswolds if it had been a Joanna Trollope?

The 'hook' for the book becomes a lot less compelling if it was presented as what I tend to suspect it really was. 'We'd had our home repossessed as a consequence of our own behaviour, so we decided to do something we used to do a lot before we had children and wild camp while walking a long-distance path.'

Anything is possible. But so much else doesn't stack up. The onus is on them to provide evidence or convince us otherwise, which the statement last week completely failed to do.

There are some great collaborative projects between the two universities- I have a friend who's an arts lecturer at the former who's teamed up with a biology researcher at the latter to get ants making art, for example!

How? Do they patter about on the canvas with paint on their tiny feet, like little pointillists?

Well noted and I agree.

but they had a shocking, clear terminal diagnosis ‘at a routine medical appointment that turned out to be anything but’ which precipitated TSP.

The above may also not be true given a number of disparities brought to light.

I agree and if you read the blurb on Amazon for the 4th book ( now delayed) she is now facing the "inevitable " with Moth's illness. The walk her next book refers to took place last winter and yet he was able to go on film promotion stints this summer.

Dyed sugar water. The way they suck at it makes patterns. Different species make different patterns!

I don’t understand how anyone would give ‘terminal’ news at a ‘routine medical appointment’. You’d usually be called back?

Or slosh teeny tiny paintpots about, like miniature Jackson Pollocks? Or exhibit their unmade nests as Young British Ants?

Well, we must bear in mind that according to the most recently reported (by SW) scan, Moth is cured! Hallelujah and all that!

It will get around the annoying detail of his appearing so well, so long after diagnosis.

You know, as a Dr, I would be so irritated by public misrepresentation of health issues. But his HCPs would not be allowed to say a thing.

It's a different sort of thing, but I used to have a patient who held public office, yet I knew that his behavior out of the public eye made him quite unsuitable to hold public office (an active addiction was probably the least of it). The advice we were given was that we could say nothing, to no-one, without his express consent, which of course he wasn't going to give.

So TWs medical history is only going to become as clear as Raymoth wants it to be.