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 for the link. And thanks to @Herringrun for finding this review ... so fearless in its analysis!

Yes, agreed. It would be a final proof copy, some of which are sent out to reviewers before publication.

They sometimes find their way into secondhand bookshops illicitly. I remember finding a proof copy of a new novel in a bookshop near where I used to live in north London that had so many outraged underlinings and exclamation and question marks in the margins that it was clearly going to be absolutely panned.

You’re right in that few did at time.

It might be interesting to know where it was/which one. I think Ray’s particular girlfriend group were A level students too.

Me too & our board (London) had a whole paper, 50 per cent on ‘map stuff’ some higher mark questions involved drawing mini maps showing understanding relief etc. Some one & two markers on ‘what does this symbol mean’ were easy but this practical paper harder, for me anyway, than the essay one.

Retaking 3 times a real stretch though & just an exaggeration surely ?

This from Milli Hill, an author with the same agent as Raynor Winn, on Substack. I think she's the only book person I've seen defending RW. It's a funny thing. I agree with her about how destructive social media pile-ons can be, but she doesn't seem to be taking into account the seriousness of the allegations against RW. She keeps asking (and in the comments for example) 'does the punishment fit the crime?' The thing is, we don't know what the punishment is, but we know the crime is (crimes are) a big one. MH might have through her agent a line into what is happening with RW but no one else does because the woman won't talk. Whether it's proportionate is a good question. But then what's proportionate? Curious to know what you all think. MH talks about whether RW might be 'crying at the kitchen table'. In which case, to me, if that's the only punishment then it wouldn't remotely fit the crime. The Hemmings were very much more damaged than that. And a good cry at the kitchen table would only be the beginning of a redemption process for RW. Do you all think there can be any redemption for her? I'm a bit hardline on justice, but because we don't actually know what goes on inside the woman's head I'm also a bit uncomfortable about baying for blood. But that's not what I'm seeing going on except in a small number of cases. For all the reasons expressed in the many threads here, there are so many genuine reasons why people are angry. https://millihill.substack.com/p/has-justice-been-served-in-the-treatment

The trouble is that, at this point, nobody knows the whole story, the truth of which continues to surface on an almost daily basis.

I suspect that 'The Truth' is a whole lot worse than has been so far revealed and suspect that a lot more is going to emerge over the coming weeks.

'Hurt feelings' vs the Truth (based on hard facts) One of the great debates of modern times.

COAST TO COAST WALK:
How did this walk come about? I know you’ve done other walks since the coast path, but why that particular crossing walk rather than one that circumnavigates?

When I first met Moth, I was a teenager. It was a long time ago, and I even now I can remember sitting in the college canteen having our very first conversation. The Coast to Coast walk had just been designated as a walk, you know, and Wainwright’s book had just appeared, and I can remember Moth talking about it. He was so excited, saying this will be a fantastic thing to do. I really want to do this thing. So our very first conversation was straight into this. We really wanted to do it throughout our life together; it was something we were always going to do together, but then a downturn in his health meant we didn’t do it. So I ended up doing it alone.

I think this book came out in 1973 - so she is 10 years old then, and Tim is 12?

Raynor Winn On Winter Hill | Muddy Stilettos Cornwall | Muddy Stilettos

@Catwith69lives & @ASandwichShortOfAPicnic

If Raynor apologised beyond ‘mistakes were made’ & sincerely, do you think people would respond differently?

I agree with Mill Hill that there’s something troubling about this ALL being on Ray, is Moth entirely blameless?

Chloe H seems to have more on Moth’s condition perhaps & the recent interview with the consultant, bold. As PPs have said.

More to the point, if it was something they had always dreamed of doing, why didn't they do it in 2013?

Re: Milli Hill.

Very briefly, Sally Walker embezzled about £100,000 in today's money, left countless people owed money, has lied about her husband's illness (supposedly terminal), and it's in some doubt whether a lot of the events she wrote about in her "unflinchingly honest" books are true.

Reading her piece, I feel Milli Hill either has absolutely no idea what has happened regarding Walker, or thinks the story is about a bit of exaggeration, and things that were dealt with long ago, and does it matter now?

i suppose it's inevitable it's all on RW as her name is on the book so that's all people can go by. Moth is an enigma. If she apologised, or her agents or publishers expressed the slightest amount of doubt, or even a bit of an 'oh f**k' in the latter two cases, there might not be quite so much outrage. People love a good redemption story. But there's not much of an appetite for recalcitrance in the face of so much sheer nastiness.

Its (imo) not just about Ray and Moth but their family. There are many people complicit in this shabby story. Yes, she is right that Sally Walker/Raynor Winn shouldn't be the sole focus of the opprobrium. However, in so far as she appears to have been the prime mover ( by her own admission), originator of the plan to walk the SWCP and, in all likelihood, wrote TSP, then I don't see why the public outcry against her is unjustified.

In addition, SW has been the public face of TSP for the past 7 years, doubling down on the origins of their plight ( court judgement/CBD diagnosis and eviction in the space of a week) while excusing Moth's last minute absence from scheduled interviews due to a decline in his health/an impromptu shopping expedition or an impulsive decision to go for a walk....

Mill Hill defending SalRay and Clemmie Hooper after her tattle alter ego was rumbled?

To fall from grace in the age of mainstream and social media must be terrible. However, both SalRay and Clemmie were demonstrably at fault. If you earn your living via selling your public image, this is a pitfall. If you do wrong -and it’s discovered- the public turn against you.

It's weird but MH must know something if she has the same agent and is publishing in favour of RW? Would she do this off her own back? It's almost as if she's acting as proxy for the fact that the agent won't say a single word. Not to anyone, anywhere, ever. (Which in itself is beyond bizarre.)

Some influencer creating a fake profile on Tattle to defend herself is hardly in the same realm. What an odd article.

I bear no personal ill will towards Sally Walker, but if she’s crying at her kitchen table (and I’m far from convinced she is), it’s because a long-running set of untruths she consciously set in motion in order to make money, have belatedly come to public attention. Her reputation is damaged, obviously, though how permanently is not clear, but she can’t be deprived of moneys already earned. She can retire comfortably from her literary endeavours. She also has the option of writing some form of mea culpa to make more money. Her scam worked.

MH seems to be conflating what RW did with her own 'fall from grace' which was only about expressing an opinion, no matter how unpopular, rather than embezzling someone out of tens of thousands of pounds and allegedly lying about so much else. It's just not the same thing at all.

Some good comments pointing out what we’ve said that Mill Hill has responded to.

I doubt it. My agent has loads of clients, most of whom I've never even met and, unless I already had a personal relationship with them my agent would NEVER ask me to say anything either for or on behalf of one of them. Just because we share an agent means nothing, we are all strangers to one another.

It would be like PRH asking another author to speak up in defence of RayMoth. A bit pointless, really. So I suspect that MH is maybe just feeling a bit of sympathy for a fellow author and sharing an agent is incidental.

SW has had ample opportunities to engage with people who have questioned the unflinching honesty of TSP ( Chloe H, the owner of the cafe at Mullion Cove etc) but instead of acknowledging the deceit and lies, she has doubled down on the veracity of it all in her rebuttal statement.

I'm sorry but I don't have an iota of sympathy for her.

It’s as if Raymoth plotted at the kitchen table ‘various people had success at doing walks & writing books - we’re walkers & we’ve already done bits of TSP etc & remember that rude male Mullion cafe owner in 90s (?) let’s fit a narrative around a walk. You’re good at writing on nature & I’m unwell, it’s lockdown & we’ve lost our home people will empathise. We can’t lose. Let’s write with a movie in mind. Think big’.

A redemption pilgrimage in offing on Camino de Santiago (?)

She seems to be excusing Clemmie’s behaviour, she of course defended Clemmie and was shouted down on social media.

What seems to be absent is that SalRay and Clemmie both deceived the public. It’s not nice being a pariah, but they wouldn’t be pariahs if they were innocent of wrongdoing.

Setting up “shock, disbelief, discussion, feeling cheated, re-examining facts” as part of a “punishment” is a straw man. It may feel like a punishment, but it’s actually the public, aka the “customers” processing the deception.

Who was it that said people often accidentally reveal their own traits by stating their insecurities?

Eg untrustworthy people tend to not trust anyone, liars tend to believe people are lying to them - I've been thinking about this and just how true it is, at least anecdotally with people I've known.

RayMoth permanently seeing malice in almost everyone they meet - well. Pot, kettle?

If MH's conclusion is 'aw, you're all being a bit mean to the poor woman' it strikes me that she should add herself to the very, very long list of people taken in by SW.

Many threads ago, there was a bit of discussion about the Profumo affair. I think it's worth reflecting on some of the people involved in that, which was an absolute media storm even pre internet.

John Profumo spent decades quietly making amends through humble charity work. I'm sure the sting for him was lessened because disgrace aside, he was a rich man. Mandy Rice Davies had the sort of incredibly resilient personality that enabled her to take it in her stride and go on to have a happy life. It pretty much permanently destroyed Christine Keeler, whose major "crime" was being a party girl who'd got caught up in things way outside her understanding or control.

I think RW and from what I know of her Clemmie Hooper had much greater active parts in the construction of their own "downfall" than Christine K. They had agency and made choices, it seems very poor ones. We can't live in a world where noone is every held to account for lies and deceit because there are also murderers and rapists in existence, or because they might be upset when the chickens come home to roost. Without evidence to the contrary, of which there seems none, I also hold Moth Walker just as responsible as his wife.

I agree.

She has shown zero remorse for fabricating so much and giving people false hope, it's now obvious she lied and has retro-fitted the narrative to suit.

The pair of them will be laughing all the way to the bank.