Thread 7: 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

Fourth item in The Observer
‘I felt I was being gaslit’ – the landlord who helped Ray...

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Thread 6
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Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement Raynor Winn

New posters welcome. It would be helpful to read at least the four Observer items above before posting.

To all - Please be careful when it comes to naming or implicating people and addresses not in the public eye or with no connection to the story, and around the understandable health speculations, especially where details are unclear or still emerging. Please do not engage with possible visitors who seem to have their own agenda and seek to derail.
Keep on the path as we have done together amazingly well for six threads so far. No saltiness. Thank you.

Do we know why that was? I don't want to bring this one tumbling down if it's because of something we're not meant to be talking about. But please feel free to DM me!

Thanks for the new thread

There's definitely a book or TV series in this!

My theory is that many people on this thread have come across - and been on the wrong side of a narcissist-adjacent liar and grifter at some point in their lives. And these people so rarely seem to get their comeuppance, that there is a great vicarious joy in seeing it happen here.

It's certainly true for me.

A PP remarked in the last thread on the similarity in name between one of the Gangani Publishing directors and conman Hendy-Freegard. It's Hendy not Hendry, but I read the wiki entry which includes the passage quoted below.

It's a bit of a head-twister to unpick all the names, but I thought there was some minor correlation in that Hendy-Freegard took on his partner's surname and that agriculture students were involved, and more major correlation that he pretended to have cancer and on the basis of that pretence did a trip around England.

'In 1992, while working in The Swan, a pub in Newport, Shropshire – and still with the unhyphenated name Freegard – he befriended two women, Sarah Smith and Maria Hendy, and a man, John Atkinson. All three were agriculture students at Harper Adams University in Edgmond.[7] He told Atkinson that he was an MI5 undercover agent who was investigating an IRA cell in the college. He forced Atkinson to let himself be beaten up to prove his loyalty and to show that he was "hard enough". He also persuaded him to behave in a bizarre manner in college to prove his loyalty and to alienate him from friends. Hendy-Freegard then told Atkinson his cover was blown and both of them had to go undercover. He persuaded Atkinson to tell Smith, who at the time was Atkinson's girlfriend, and Hendy that he had liver cancer and persuaded them to accompany them in a "farewell tour" all over England.[8]'

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hendy-Freegard

web.archive.org/web/20120703185144/www.ganganipublishing.co.uk/pages/about-us

Explanation in OP.

Ah ok, I can see now how the chicken shop story is just a big fat metaphor. Her blurry lines between fact and fiction have me questioning everything she writes!

Here's the wikipedia entry for, "Folie à deux."

I am very keen on this theory of what is going on with these characters. Some of us think he is the dominant partner, others think she is. Personally, I think that they switch rôles depending on circumstances, completely emmeshed.

Folie à deux - Wikipedia https://share.google/1ObODQXAb6B2PT6Z8

I'd just call it being in cahoots!

Thanks for the new thread, Disappointed!

Not in my case. I'm just interested in literary self-reinvention and how a particular story 'lands' with a readership.

Me too. I’m also interested in how they managed to keep their past a secret for so long!

I am so angry about their false claims of Moth having a short prognosis and terminal disease with a very short time left. They claimed this was the case in 2013 (two years) and again in 2021 (two months).

It is downright evil and really damages genuine patients with terminal diagnoses especially those with CBD.

I lost count how many times I was advised to eat almonds, or kale, or some other food item because it would supposedly cure my cancer. The Salt Path narrative encourages these sorts of beliefs and behaviours: that people with very serious disease can cure themselves if they only made the effort to go on a walk and/or eat random food items.

It is evil.

I'm not sure about them being delusional / mental illness, more like making a story up for financial gain really.

Thanks. That'll teach me not to fast scroll.

From the previous thread:

Her agent, Jen Christie's website specifically says she is 'keen to see memoirs with a distinctive voice and timely themes; general non-fiction that blends personal narratives with broader societal issues'.
That's pretty much the trend at the moment.

'Creative nonfiction' is popular at the moment. The idea is if you're writing memoir, whether your own life or someone else's, you stick to the basic facts, but you can invent scenes and dialogue to illustrate the facts, while not including any life events you don't know to be true.

And don't claim it's all entirely true.

For me it's cathartic.

Partly because I felt frustrated at the time I read the book because the court case/house loss story was riddled with holes but it felt like you weren't allowed to say that.

But mainly because they fed into a really damaging narrative that people can cure their own serious illnesses by "doing things right". And that whole industry and myth is really harmful and isolating when you are diagnosed with a serious condition and instead of being met with support from friends and family you are given lots of "advice" about how you wouldn't be ill/can cure it if only you drank apple cider vinegar/went hill walking/tried yoga/cut carbs out of your diet or whatever. It's a bit bewildering to be honest and quite isolating as you end up wanting to spend less and less time with friends you would otherwise treasure.

There is a 3 part documentary on Netflix regarding this case The Puppet Master: Hunting the Ultimate Conman. There is also a feature film Rogue Agent
with James Norton as Hendy-Freegard.

Maybe this has been raised before but could there be something in the fact that crucial events seem to happen between 2006 and 2008?

2006:

Timoth's brother buys a French chateaux and, a 41 minute drive away, a dove cote.

Timoth starts to experience symptoms (we have to take his word for it - he first attended surgery in 2009 as stated in 2015 letter, which also says he's had symptoms for 9 or 10 years.)

2007:
RayMoth buy the house and land adjacent to the dove cot (T already with symptoms)

2008:

Timoth's brother and family relocates permanently to the chateau.

SalRay is caught embezzling £64,000 (possibly having begun doing so around 2004, assuming that's when she started the job and gives enough time to accrue such an amount unnoticed. Assumption being the company began in 2001 and there was a previous bookkeeper.)

SalRay has also taken out 4 credit cards in Timoth's name (remember, he has symptoms by now).

Salray and Timoth get a loan from Timoth's London relative to repay Hemmings.

I don't know what I'm trying to glean here or there is anything. Just seems very strange that Salray began stealing and getting into debt around the time Timoth started to have symptoms and when they'd recently bought a ruined house in France. I think I need to re-read the Times piece about France.

Thanks for the new thread @DisappointedReader

Auto fiction is also very popular, Rachel Cusk and people like that who go into the minutae of lives very like their own. Importantly it's marketed as fiction and generally written by accomplished writers.

I'd be happy with a book like that, as long as it didn't pretend to be "unflinchingly honest"

I enjoy a good Bill Bryson book yet I have always assumed he takes a comedian's liberty with the stories he tells.

Apologies if this has been discussed before (haven't read all the threads!).

So I saw a clip of the interview by Giles Whittell of Chloe Hadjimatheou (it's on theobserveruk instagram) in which she talks about interpreting the land registry documents relating to the loan against the house. So she says she called up the property solicitor named on the documents and he was really helpful and explained everything (hence her conclusion about the loan being a charge against the house and it being repaid on demand etc).

Anyway, THEN she says, oh but actually, I misread the solicitor's name and although he was super helpful, he had nothing to do with the case. Oh, and I couldn't actually trace the named solicitor.

There's a lot of push back in the comments (eg: But hang on you never actually spoke to the actual person mentioned on the legal documents. Why would you not do that? ) and the mood music there seems to be turning against what some are calling a 'petty' and 'vindictive' investigation and to the Walker-Wynn favour.

It does seem super-odd that Chloe wouldn't say to the solicitor, I see you were involved in this case, can you give me some insight and he saying, well I wasn't, do you still want my twopennysworth? Rather than finding out after the fact she wasn't even talking to the right person. Sure, it doesn't take away from the Walker's deception, but it kind of weakens the authenticity of the investigation? Maybe? I think if you 'j'accuse', you have to at least have the right witness? (edited to add, and makes me think, OK, how forensic has she been).

Fascinating. Apparently Tim told someone that Sally had taken out several credit cards in his name. Was she was out of control at this point and he was exasperated or was he lying and throwing her under the bus ?

Just about half way through the Rick Stein episode and the difference in Timoths behaviour/demeanour/physicality in the 'doing something' clips (particularly without Sally-Ray) vs the 'sitting chatting letting Sally-Ray do at least half or more of the talking' is quite striking!

I can absolutely see him being bipolar/depressed, swinging from very cheerful and capable to shut down and near silent. I realise you can't actually 'see' mental health issues like that of course... but given the length of time he's had 'some sort of...' illness that fluctates. Mm.

@AldoGordo I wonder if that is when they bit off more than they could chew - buying the French property. Such a thing tends to take several years of planning, saving, etc and if someone does have depression/bipolar, some health issue exacerbated by stress... the run up to a plan like that with other people and other peoples finances dependent or linked, is a likely trigger.

Again purely a feeling but I wonder if they'd been skating on thin ice for a while, saw this French property as a last chance at an idyllic rural life (which seems to be what they've been trying to achieve all their lives) and over stretched what were already fragile finances.

Ask ChatGPT: Write a paragraph in the style of Raynor Winn about my walk along the SW coast path yesterday (all 11 miles of it) in a "triumphing- over- adversity" stylee. It could be called "Why I've finally bought a hat like a sensible person"

Why I've Finally Bought a Hat Like a Sensible Person
Eleven miles of wind-whipped coastline yesterday, and each step along the South West Coast Path felt like a small rebellion against everything I’d once believed I couldn’t do. The sun was merciless—an unflinching presence that turned my scalp into kindling and left salt trails on my face, not all of them from sweat. The cliffs fell away to the right in that dramatic way that makes your heart both leap and ache, and still I climbed, descended, climbed again. There was pain—of course there was—but also something more defiant rising with each step: the knowledge that I am still here, still walking, still choosing this path. I had laughed at hats once, thought them a concession, something worn by people who had given in. But by mile ten, with the wind combing through what was left of my sense of humour, I understood. It’s not giving in, it’s gearing up. So I bought the hat—not as surrender, but as a badge of survival.

Following on from the last thread, I remember being pleasantly surprised when reading Patrick Leigh Fermor for the first time because nowadays it is practically criminal to relate your youth as one great happy exhilarating adventure. He's all 'When I was a baby my parents left me with complete strangers for years, and it was marvellous!' or 'It was snowing and I was down to my last franc and I had to sleep in a derelict barn, and it was just thrilling!' (Although Fermor is another one who embellished his stories, albeit in a far less consequential way than the TayWinns.).

Everything now has to come with an emotive or tragic backstory, and it's all just a bit tedious and draining and so bloody worthy. You also get the phenomenon of people who have had pretty comfortable lives inventing or exaggerating problems because there is no social credit in being middle-class and well-adjusted. I said on one of the previous threads that con artists used to pretend to be aristocrats or authority figures but nowadays there is more currency in pretending to be one of life's victims. Reading the (abysmal) extract of Winn's writing on here, it strikes me that she heavy-handedly pressed all the kind of buttons that get things commissioned in the era of The Repair Shop and minor key pop ballads.