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 don’t see that there’s more reason to feel sorry for Sally. The portrayal of her parents is all through her own lens which as we know is capable of massive distortion! And even if she didn’t feel the family she grew up in was particularly loving, it’s no explanation or excuse for treating her employer like shit.

as for Moth supporting her and their children, remember by 2004 those children would have been well into secondary school years. Not small children needing constant attention. There was just as much onus on Sally to be earning and providing. I’m a very similar age to Sally, born just 16 months after her. This wasn’t the dark ages; many of us mums were back out to work after maternity leave. I think the reality is that neither Tim nor Sally ever really wanted to do the hard graft of ordinary full time 9-5 employment. They were special, ‘children of nature’ who felt entitled to a lifestyle they didn’t want to fund themselves.

@AldoGordo

Yes they got lucky but self belief can take people a long way. They've also demonstrated some very peculiar behaviour over the years. They must have felt invincible as time went on without challenge or else they'd surely have kept a low profile. Possibly ended up believing their own publicity.

We packed our things, taxed and insured the van, put enough money for a deposit and a month's rent into the bank

I find this interesting.
So they had enough money to tax/insure the van and a deposit and month's rent in cash that they could put into the bank. It's not even said "we put all our savings into the bank so we could use it for renting a place", which implies to me that there was more cash available.
With the victim status she likes, I'd have expected there to be comments about how it was all their spare cash and they'd be back on pot noodles etc.
But where did all that cash come from? Why did they have cash not in the bank?That's got to be £2-3k of money in that little lot.

But going back to PIP, it's not just about how easy to walk, or even diagnosis. It's about care needs, so I'm sure they could have applied and got something.

I certainly saw what was said, but maybe someone on here has a screenshot?

My memory was that the nephew said, on LinkedIn, that they were both kpathological liars who’d left a trail of destruction in their wake.’

That may not be verbatim. And yes, it was deleted.

Taking the bag of cash was incredibly foolish (as well as, of course, wrong and selfish), but I don't find it difficult to explain. I agree with @crossedlines, there's a mixture of systemic planning and bodging in a lot of what SW & TW do. From what's been reported, the longer SW ran the embezzlement without being caught, the more reckless and brazen she became. So she began by forging invoices - they would have been superficially plausible, and the Hemmingses would have needed to dig through the records to identify them as fake. But by the end she'd stopped bothering to cover her tracks, and was paying for her personal shopping with forged cheques. She must have become convinced that Martin Hemmings would never realise what was going on: so convinced, in fact, that she thought he wouldn't even realise she'd taken the bag of cash.

It supposedly comes from Sally’s job with the shearers, and supposedly totals £1500, though that seems unlikely for a number of reasons.

(I did crack up during the film, which clearly feels the need to explain (understandably) that Raynor has tried to get other jobs during the supposed nine months at Polly’s, while her seriously ill spouse renovates the meat packing she’d. There’s a scene of Gillian Anderson walking into a cafe that’s advertised for staff and being eyed disdainfully by two 20something staff who look as if they’re saying ‘As if!’ before walking out defeatedly. I imagine we’re supposed to think they think she looks too scruffy and homeless, as there isn’t even a conversation about experience etc, but as GA is a vision of boho gorgeousness, the scene doesn’t work at all.)

If anything, i think any plan has evolved beyond recognition over the years. If there was some plan, I don't believe that plan became writing a book based on Moth being terminally ill until 2015.

That was on the second part of the walk after SW had been paid for her sheep shearing job (I think).

Agree about PIP being based on care needs. They would have needed a medical professional to agree the extent that the illness was affecting day to day life ( which, according to SWs description, was significantly)therefore Im not convinced TWs symptoms were anywhere near what she described.

This doesn't have much longer to run and it's unlikely there are any more disclosures. They might have a high profile interview, for a fat fee, in the future but that's it. If they buy a property and aren't stupid they can live very well. They will soon have the old age pension as well!

Thanks, that’s very interesting

Yes, exactly. I mean, for all we know, in fact they did do the obvious thing and claim unemployment and disability benefits and get themselves on a council housing waiting list while staying with family or renting somewhere cheap.

It just made for a better ‘hook’ for the book that, after the double whammy of eviction and diagnosis, they didn’t do the sensible thing, they did the mad, brave, illogical, life-affirming thing. Or they didn’t sit about for months in a cheap rental or caravan trying to figure out what to do, and then set out with their tent — they went pretty much straight out onto the path from the bailiffs’ arrival. (Again, in the film amusingly depicted as them walking out of the dark, enclosed house into a bright, white light that looks a bit like filmic depictions of the afterlife, rather than daylight in Wales.)

• the sheep shearing, if it happened, was probably paid cash in hand

@Featherbeds too - re: nephew’s family…My feeling is there was much wider family support for Raymoth in earlier years. All chipping in & sofa surfing fine when really needed. Ray said they couldn’t stay with friends or family as really on uppers as serious arguments inevitable - but are they? What was Uncle’s breaking point? Which serious argument/s led to abrupt status change as pathological liars?

@crossedlines Didn’t grow up in a very loving family unit.
To me the only evidence for this is SW's writing but the things she does write don't seem so bad. Don't go into the woods, she is given a reason but obviously keeps on going. The time where her father threw the bluebells away is supposedly when he had the tenancy letter, and was obviously upset. Don't climb the willow tree - how many parents have told their kids that. Don't jump from the hay bales- again obviously an accident waiting to happen even though most farm kids I have met have done it.
Also, she did grow up in a household that consisted of Mum, Dad, older sister, Aunt, Uncle (plus her paternal grandfather died there in 1975, don't know how long he lived there tho), so that must have felt like a lot of people to be told off by!
Other wording - Moth is a rebel because he skives off college, I think he would have been in a majority rather than a minority.

IIRC Ros Hemmings said that when they initially checked the books around Easter 2008, they found £9.000 missing between that date and Christmas - that is almost £3.000 per month!
That speaks to a severe acceleration in brass-neckery (compared to ~64.000 over 6-8 years, although we don't know when it started).

Maybe the embezzlement wasn't over 8 years. But in the last few years leading up till 2008

How does one define success? Commercial success is one thing and clearly they have secured commercial success but I don't see commercial success and monetary gain as success, albeit with a low- key award to boot. For me success is a book of literary merit ( with or without commercial gains). Therefore for me TSP is not a book I personally would have been proud to have written ( especially in light of recent findings).

For balance, I really think it would be useful for CH at The Observer to run an article pointing out the help which is actually available to people in this kind of situation ( illness, homelessness ) including benefits, emergency loans for home deposit, etc. if they are in genuine need.

I agree. What I keep thinking about is the interview with the man with CBD, John Todd, and his wife. You can see the sadness and concern about his future in both their faces. All I see when I see photos of Tim is a "happy chappy"! He does not look like he has a care in the world. Her face is harder to read. I don't know what ails him, but I don't believe he is too concerned about it.

He is a professional person who on his LinkedIn posts about his business (he's successful in his field and we'll liked) mentioned them.

On the Sunday it broke he said...something a bit different from me...then went on to say his aunt and uncle were pathological liars who had left a trail of destruction in their wake. He also said he was glad it had now come out.

His wife reiterated what he'd said, and on another platform she also said that if he had been on more than LinkedIn, he would have posted elsewhere, too.

Her comment has since gone because it was in reply to another that was deleted.

Prob missing something (& minor) but to acquaintances on walk they were always Sal & Tim (?) Correct (?)

I was still hoping for more disclosures regarding the plausibility of the initial disgnosis (to me it sounded like CH was hinting at something like that in the last video), as well as more discussion about the responsibility of the publisher, especially in this 'sub-genre' of medical miracle stories.
(I certainly don't expect anything that could part the Walkers from their money, except their own overspending.)
But you may be right, the story might be nearing it's end, although there was a lull before and then it came back, so I still havw some hope.

John Todd appears to be seriously ill though (?) Moth isn’t as yet, to same degree. John is incapacitated.

It seems that way. The name changes fit with writing the book.

@Choux

I don't feel much sympathy for either of them mainly because of the money and the illness exaggeration. What I also dislike is, despite their 'eco warrior, mother earth, all we need is nature and love' schtick, they are very money orientated and clearly covetous of what others have. It's the falseness of how they portray themselves that grates and their assumption that no one can see how they really are.