Thread 13: 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's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...

The 12 Observer reports currently available online: The real Salt Path | The Observer

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement: Raynor Winn

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

Threads 2-11: Links all in the OP of Thread 12

Thread 12: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5384574-thread-12-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 welcome. It would be helpful to read at least some of the Observer items above before posting. There are currently 12 interesting items on The Observer website and linked to above.

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. Please do not engage with visitors 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 twelve 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.

Have the sales or thefts of fudge gone up recently?
Will Simon's head ever turn up?
Has the shed of doubt yet burst at the seams?
Will the old charabanc hold up as a tour bus for our hip new band The Drive-By Scolders?
And finally, how much salt can we possibly cram into a giant pinch?

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

Which PRH must have known or they would not have risked to publish TSP.

Indeed. And it's not the only random deletion. In each seemingly innocuous deleted photo there must be some subtle clue. However, the clue(s) could also have been in the caption(s). It wasn't always possible to edit captions on IG so maybe she didn't realise editing was an option.

I've now added Land's End to our charabanc tour itinerary. I just hope we can all fit in around the signpost for our thread group photo.

I think the photo is cropped. It's not hard to take a selfie ensuring two people are at least in shot. Not to mention that the point if this selfie was undoubtedly to have the sign in full in the background.

I have an idea...will return with whatever the result is...

Land's End is tacky and a complete rip off! Used to be owned by Peter de Savary. Would suggest charabanc diversion to the Minack (as long as Gigspanner aren't playing there!)

Maybe because the picture shows her crooked teeth and she does not like them, considering in most pictures she smiles with her mouth closed?
Which would be somewhat ironic because it is one of the most charming pictures of her out there imo.

Just a possibility of course, based on totally unqualified armchair psychology, and much less exciting than the idea that there is a clue hidden in the picture.
But since one of the things she has not deleted is that video of Tim walking along and looking extremely healthy, I'm not sure hiding evidence in a logical way is necessarily what she is doing.

Which were deleted captions?

All these long walks, neurologists can't explain it, but Moth always enjoys a Lazarus like recovery. Not saying that extreme exercise cures CBD and keeps Moth alive, but just saying....

I can see that you received my bribe of fudge, cider and headless Simon Armitage life-size cut out as an inducement to post something nice!

Seriously, I'm proud of the posters on these thirteen threads.

Given the Okehampton / Oakhampton repeated error I posted about last night, I am unimpressed all round with the copy editing on all the RW / PRH books. It certainly makes me wonder how many errors deliberately misleading statements and inaccuracies were allowed though overall.

I volunteer as taker of wonky cropped selfies correspondent!

The legal read is not a criminal investigation or an investigative journalist sniffing out a story, though. It’s a legal exercise in ass-covering.

It’s possible, for instance, that SW shows them some documentation, say the final court order awarding their house to the other party, and says that as there are family sensitivities involved (the original debt involving a recently-deceased family member), they are removing certain identifying details, but retaining the ‘emotional truth’, that someone Tim trusted since childhood had left them liable for a debt they felt should not have been their problem after a business failed.

Could AI sort the proofreading errors out?

Elsewhere, I think there was a recent article which suggested that the proliferation of latter day Sloane Ranger Georginas and Henriettas in the publishing industry waiting to snare an investment banking husband but with limited experience of the niceties of tax credits/disability allowances etc might have had a part in TSP making its way through 'due diligence' to being published.

Of course we will be going to the Minack! I feel that our thread poetry and song deserves to be performed in that environment. Headless Simon can be our MC. As for Land's End, we all need a bit of tat in our lives and anyway, as it will be a research trip, it will become highbrow.

We can have a group MN photo in front of the signpost at Land's End!

On the deleted IG photos

You may first have to extract @Catwith69lives who will be sulking on the charabanc and refusing to take part.

EDIT: To see the photo you must click on it to see the result.

Ok, not scientific at all but I transposed the Land's End photo over another Raymoth selfie. Using opacity settings it was clear the faces were too big on the LE image. So i reduced its size to fit then put that directly over the larger image. This suggests where the LE image was likely cropped. Caveats: it's an approximation and depends on both selfies being taken at the same distance from the faces (for example, both with Moth's arm fully extended) and the other selfie being original (i.e. not cropped).

EDIT: To see the photo you must click on it to see the result.

Getting back to the Minack, there are very few date stamped points of the walk where you can definitely corroborate the narrative in TSP with multiple ( the entire cast of Iolanthe) witnesses. They ( Raymoth) either a) were there and embellished the account or b) fabricated it and retrofitted the narrative.

Should be fairly easy to ascertain the truth imo.

I feel we should write a collective comic opera for a Minack performance. It would operate like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, so the Walkers would only sometimes be seen crossing the stage with rucksacks in the background, and the focus would be on minor characters and inanimate objects.

It would be narrated by Smotyn the Sheep, feature a Chorus all wearing Simon Armitage masks, a cheery singing tent called Vango, a patter song by a barbershop quartet dressed as bars of fudge, and a dance number by the Yompers. Non-singing cameos for Paddy Dillon, Grant’s Beauties, and Beowulf.

Love a bit of Tom Stoppard!

I'll badly Photoshop her into it. It'll be in keeping with the whole enterprise.

Brilliant sleuthing. If Chloe H could include such detail in her next piece, suspect it would go down well with 'cosy crime' afficianados of Richard Osman/Rev Richard Coles crime novels!

I've sent you a PM @AldoGordo

It's already been commented that RW has a vivid imagination. Somewhere on one of these threads was a link to a public appearance of RW where the discussion turned to tutorials led by RW, entitled "How to become a successful author" or something similar. In answer to the interviewer's question she explained that she wrote from pictures. Closes her eyes and, in her minds-eye, imagines the scenario and action taking place. Then she simply puts into words what she had "seen".
I'm convinced that's how she "compiled" TSP narrative - from actual location visits linked together by scenarios from her imagination. Also I suspect writing from actual guide-book pictures? Not suggesting for one moment that they didn't visit any of the locations, but that the "gaps" in the journey were written up as fiction but presented as fact.