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.

Thank you.

Excellent review. The reviewer might be surprised to learn not the first foray into dead sheep territory. NB: HNTDDD & also they forgot Moth’s prescription. Most would detour & go back for that alone!

Did Raymoth write re: hopeful film? Peregrine vignette etc? Motifs etc, ‘Lettuce’ the tortoise? The glamour & added colour of Grant & blondes?

I'm glad it wasn't just me who clocked the dead ewe as likely fabricated nonsense

I did O level geography around the same time as SalRay, maybe a year later. Managed to pass even though my valley cross sections always seemed to resemble the Himalayas. Honestly don't remember anything in the exam about OS maps, perhaps a bit in course work early on.

Just noticed something strange in the PSPA statement after the 1st Observer article:

Raynor and Moth worked with many individuals and organisations since their first book was published, including PSPA. We received the family’s need for support, and desire to raise awareness of PSP & CBD in good faith.

Maybe it's just clumsy writing, but it sounds as if they had only been in contact with Moth (both working together as well as they supporting him) since the publication of TSP in 2018 - but we know the doctor who wrote the 2015 letter referred him to the PSPA.

Does that mean that Moth contact them for 3 years of living with the diagnosis until the book came out?
There might be different reasons, but one possibility is that being associated with them made him look more credible as a genuine CBD patient in the eyes of the public.
I don't think that patient support organisations require proof of diagnosis when someone approaches them.

https://www.pspassociation.org.uk/news/pspas-response-to-the-observer-article/

Same. Did O level geography in 1982 and as I recall we were only tested on some of the OS symbols. Which were pretty easy

From the Sunday Times "Relative Values" archive piece that @Hyenana linked (cheers) it could not be more clear that they said that he got a diagnosis of CBD at the same time they lost the house, just before the walk.

EDIT: Moth didn't contact them

It's the only organic National Trust garden in Wales, and one of only three throughout England and Wales - although the other two, Trengwainton, near Penzance, and Snowshill Manor, in Gloucestershire, "haven't got the same pedigree as Plas", according to current head gardener Tim Walker.

BBC Wales North West, The life of a garden, 7 September 2004: https://archive.ph/6KXzq

On the retaking O level Geography 3 times, I'd be interested to know the mechanics and timeline on this. I assume the first time she failed would have been at school, when she presumably took it along with all her other O levels at 16.
And then she seems to have gone to 6th Form college (where it was mutual love at first sight in the canteen) where presumably she was doing A levels? So did she take O level Geography again at the end of Lower 6th and for the third time successfully at the end of Upper 6th along with her A-levels? And as a PP pointed out, why?

Geography is not an especially hard subject and it's difficult to understand why it was so important to gain an O level in it. It obviously hadn't prevented her from going to 6th Form and doing A levels. Do we know what they were and whether she took and passed them?

There was mention somewhere of her having an unfinished 'law degree' after working in a 'fines office' . What is the source of this? I'm very sceptical about that. She might have got part way through training as a solicitor/legal exec at a time when you didn't need a degree and just had to put in 5 years on the job in order to qualify.

But getting on to a highly academic and competitive law degree course? Pull the other one.

I also did O level Geography around this time, and I don’t remember much about OS maps. Though maybe different exam boards varied. I certainly only had basic OS map reading ability at the time, and I passed.

I see the law degree claims are in a 'Career Interrupted' podcast from June this year. But that episode seems to have been deleted from the list available? Has anyone got an active link or a transcript?

Yes, this is exactly my point: why keep retaking it when employers don't generally ask for it, as they do with maths and English? What careers is geography vital for? I strongly suspect it's another small and unnecessary lie - she'd have got the same result from just writing 'I failed O level geography' but couldn't stop herself piling up the bad things happening.

Good point too about the law degree. Her doing some kind of legal clerical training on the job is far more likely.

I'm guessing none of the material anyone has picked up about either of the WWs' early lives has mentioned their qualifications or exam results?

There is info in the Timeline at the start of the thread, and a link in the Timeline links post.

Is there something wrong with the link in the timeline? This one should work.
https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/career-interrupted/e283no-home-no-money-no-plan-URg9c06YKIW/
My theory after I found that interview was that the 'law degree' was probably a hyped up version of training as a law clerk because that's what she was presented as in that 2004 BBC article.
Is a solicitor exec more or less the same?
It's interesting that you mention 5 years on the job because that happened (at least she says it did) when she was having her children so in her mid/late 20s.

Is there something wrong with the link in the timeline?

No, I've just clicked on it and gone to the podcast.

Sure that was me? Because I'm not...

My theory has always been, for some reason, Moth doing A level retakes despite plasterer day release mooted. The Winns strike me as type to send clever Sally to academic ish typical 6th form Coll if not a school for As. Moth I can imagine with Oxford ambitions if not the requisite staying power needed for entry quals.

Here is a question for IT experts. The photo below from RW's IG feed purports to show Monty with a paperback of The Salt Path. It's dated 23 Feb 2018. However, the paperback version didn't appear until 31 Jan 2019! Any logical explanation?

Thanks for the link to the podcast. They work fine and I've listened to the relevant bit now. Interesting though that this episode was not listed on the Career Interrupted site.

A legal executive is not the same as a solicitor. To be a qualified legal exec you need to be a Fellow of CILEX (Chartered Institute of Legal Executives). I'm not familiar with the training and study process back in the 80s/90s but it was certainly aimed at those who didn't want or who weren't up to the traditional academic route into a legal career.

A solicitor back then could qualify by doing 5 years as an articled clerk, what would now be called a training contract. No degree of any kind required. I know because I had a friend who did this.

The idea that SW was 'given the opportunity' (by whom?) to do a law degree 'remotely' and completed two years of study first with a newborn and then another baby plus a full time job and a house renovation is ludicrous.

I just can't see he would have done A-levels. Few people did them back then. My DH was the only one in his very large family to take them, and his siblings all tease him about being in education forever. Becoming a (master) plasterer would surely have been enough.

I'm yet another one who took O-level geography at almost exactly that time. There would be no reason to retake it at all!

Could be a proof copy from before the hardback publication?

Is it a proof copy in advance of the paperback being released?

Edited to say: crosspost 😂

Yeah, honest, your post of 12.38 with the archive link.

@SwetSwetSwetI agree. I’m the exact same age as SW. I was a rare bird in going to university in 1984 (maybe because of the crappy comp I attended - but I think the general figures reflect my experience). First in my family too. We forget how rare it was before the later explosion of places.

It's all a bit of a blur now 😬 plus I didn't recognize the 'Relative Values' reference