Thread 14: 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 13 Observer items currently available on their online 'The real Salt Path' page: The real Salt Path | The Observer

3 more from The Observer:

‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...

The real Salt Path | The Observer (The Slow Newscast)

‘We thought: it can’t be the Salt Path couple – they’d ha...

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?

Thread 13: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5386458-thread-13-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 16 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 thirteen 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.

Are we all becoming Hyperglycaemic from all the fudge?
Have shares in Cadbury's gone up?
Can we remain cheerful in the face of such shameless glumwashing?
Will I need to fill up with much petrol this thread for the drive-by scoldings?
Will our Chloe H get exclusive interviews with the disgruntled peregrine, tortoise and Hollywood rabbits?
What has our Simon A got to say about this, preferably in verse?

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

I left school in 1978 after O levels, went on to do A levels as did many of my cohort. Those who didn't became secretaries (well, working in a typing pool generally, where you didn't have to have many qualifications at all) or went into various vocational courses like hairdressing (mainly learned on the job as day release) or, indeed, went straight into work. Back then there were a lot more unskilled types of job available and, having been the first year of Comprehensive education in a previous Grammar school, our school name still carried weight. So you could walk into almost any admin type job, even if you'd really screwed your O levels.

I didn't want to go to Uni after A levels, but quite a lot of my A level group did. I'd had enough by then but went off to a different kind of training. Life was different back then, there were a lot of 'jobs for girls' - it was still the era of secretaries teetering around in heels and making coffee and being adorably ditsy with the filing if you were so minded.

The problem is when reputable outlets, the likes of R4, take the ‘others are jealous of her success’ line without full knowledge.

Didn't the BBC put money into the film? Their staff may have known not to ask awkward questions.

You could do O-levels at secondary moderns, my df did, but you had to do CSEs too. So df did something like 12 CSEs and 9 O-levels.
The default was CSEs, O-levels were only taken if you were right at the top.

He also did his A-levels there, the first student to do that. He took his A-level maths at the same time as his teacher and got better grades by 2.

But he should never have failed the 11+. It was family circumstances really, and he was given the opportunity to move to the grammar, but refused as he didn't think it was for people like him.

When you're being interviewed about your books you tend to get asked the same questions over and over again (I've been interviewed a fair few times), so you positively welcome anything slightly different! You've gone over and over how you came to write it, what your inspiration was, how you do your research, what you're reading now, what you are working on at the moment - it all seems very pre-prepared and scripted. So usually when you get someone asking you something 'off script' you absolutely run with it as you're so bored with the usual stuff. SWs unwillingness to expound on something less-explored would seem to be telling....

Oh, and in deference to my new position as Nudist Writing Correspondent, I wrote this answer with my T shirt off.

I just listened to a bit of that podcast. It’s so interesting - I’ve kept up with all these threads so, despite not having read any of SalRay's books, I feel I’ve gained a pretty good grounding in them through the extensive extracts quoted (and tbh it’s just strengthened my belief that they’re very much not my cup of tea).

My point is that, yet again, SalRay goes back to using exactly the same phrases and stories that she trots out in every interview, in most cases word-for-word. There’s undoubtedly a script. She simply does not deviate. All this 'going for a walk' after seeing the book when hiding in the little cupboard under the stairs, yadda yadda yadda…..now, I know most people with something to plug have an agreed version of events they’ve arrived at so they can handle publicity without needing to think up new answers on the spot every time, BUT - with SalRay there’s virtually no embellishment, no little throwaway extra detail that brings things to life and gives the narrative an aura of lived experience. It’s so very weird. As though it was laboriously written down, she learned it by rote, and whenever someone gives her the key words she responds with the appropriate bit of the text.

Listening to that interview doesn’t give me any extra insight into their actual experiences, it’s like a precis of the book (plus copious deflecting references to the film).

I just listened to the beginning of this. What surprised me is how badly she tells their story to an interviewer who clearly doesn’t know much about her, and keeps quoting Wikipedia (he seems remarkably puzzled by Wiki describing her as a ‘British long-distance walker and writer’) — is she used to a more informed and sympathetic audience, who are more obviously enthused by her, and are tactful enough not to press her on the court case or anything she visibly doesn’t want to talk about?

It just struck me as interesting that he asks slightly blunt, unexpected questions, like ‘Was it hard to get it published?’ and pushing her on Moth’s real name, whereas my sense that most UK interviewers were less direct.

(Why was she being so weird about Moth’s name so late in the day? She’d said his name numerous times in the media.)

She also really underplays the writing process (just written for Moth, no reference to re-writes, self-editing, effort), and implies she only sent to a single agent, who signed her immediately.

"Was it hard to get published?" - I would realllllly like to know the truth of how she came to be published, actually. How much were PRH or her agent in on the manufacturing of this tale? etc

Actually, when you think about, Salray is really VERY good at interviews - on her terms. No deviation, tells the story she wants to tell, and somehow has most interviewers accept this without probing deeply.

I think there should be some sort of journalistic award for someone to gets her to go off piste. The Path of Salt prize maybe! C'mon, I'm sure other people here can think of better names for this prize! The flickering moth prize? Salty sal? Truth or dare?

@WynkenDeWorde

"SalRay goes back to using exactly the same phrases and stories that she trots out in every interview, in most cases word-for-word. There’s undoubtedly a script."

It's a defence mechanism, as someone's mentioned earlier, to protect her from slipping up. More seriously, Jimmy Savile did this and was incredibly repetitive. The fear of inadvertently revealing something which might give away a hint of the truth, must be very strong. Endlessly repeating the same stuff gives a feeling of security as is the refusal to allow any different questions. Come to think of it, SalRay says she 'can't allow' any doubt to be cast on their story in her rebuttal statement.

The Lot's Wife award for getting her to turn and look back.

Moth looked to be reading from a script someone remarked re: One Show. Also his comment to Jason Issacs re: not acting as well as him.

Significant books come magically to hand - Beowulf only book to survive flit from library as in Moth’s hand at time, significant book re: mother’s illness…I am doubtful there was any epiphany over a book seen in a packing case.

I think re: embezzlement at bare minimum they decided to have a plan/script ‘just in case’ & doubled down when Observer came knocking.

The real name of Moth happens at 12.26 - finally found it!

So, so odd that she made such a big thing of it, saying it was an abbreviation but not what the real name was.

Then abruptly gets back on track to talk about Jason Isaacs.

If this was actually recorded shortly before broadcast then it had been a couple of months after Chloe H had first been in touch. And by May had tried to talk to Sally numerous times before being blanked.

The Salitzer Prize, for derailing scripted interviews.

@Aussiebornandbred · Today 02:01

https://omny.fm/shows/conversations-with-cornesy/conversations-with-cornesy-raynor-winn
Well done. An astonishingly refreshing difference to all the fawning interviews heard previously. Just straightforward questions - with, at least, two highly evasive answers.

Any more helpful Aussies out there?

Maybe a new Nobel prize is warranted - for Li(e)terature!

Chloe Hadjimatheou said that the real names were the key to finding the facts and these were provided by her anonymous source. Perhaps this unknown person should get an award?

Yes, I agree - it all does sound really implausible… weeks / months of huge energy expenditure while eating very limited rations - their clothes would have been dropping off them really very quickly - and exhaustion / collapse. It sounds like it was a highly fictionalised account - with maybe a few kernels of truth underneath (as pps have said)

Don’t we know they are Tim & Sally Walker? Obvs missing something & if other names beyond these and Raymoth is that not highly suspect?

Their real names weren't public knowledge until Chloe H's piece.

It was the names of Sally and Tim Walker that were given to Chloe H, from which she was able to find documents.

Listening to that Australian interview and she’s on about the hunger, and keeping it at bay with hot water (one teabag could last all day between them, and no milk). Then into the anecdote about getting knocked by the dog and losing her coins and the dog’s owner poking her with her foot and calling her a drunken tramp. Again, almost verbatim how it’s written in the book. Very little added to the story, even the discussion about losing a sense of self is similar to what she’s said before. No development beyond what’s already been said.

I wonder if any similar anecdote written in some 50s out of print walking guide, why would this not surprise me.

She sounds as if she’s reciting, we’ve just gone through how had she found it living in a village for the first time in her life (!!) and then onto TWS- she’s said how Iceland was so moon-like but those pictures shared earlier showed it to be very green!