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.

There is this passage in the One Show video where Sally says something like 'the doctor said don't exhaust yourself and be careful on the stairs - so we walked 630 miles' and everybody is laughing happily at this crazy heartwarming story because it turned out to be alright in the end.

And I wonder how these same people would have reacted if someone told them 'my husband just got a diagnosis of a physically debilitating disease so we decided to go wild camping, without proper equipment or food and out of reach of medical help'.

Surely they all would have been shocked by the irresponsibility, but somehow they don't make the connection.

Right. But isn't Moth supposed to be seriously ill since 2013, as she describes in the book? In the second book, he can hardly get out of bed. The way she goes on and on about how he is going to die in detail, I don't believe that is anxiety on her part, I think she is creating a romantic sad story for her readers, like" Love Story". But Moth's story will have a miraculous happy ending because of their courage and their walk.

TBF, my OH has terminal cancer and has well outlived his original 6 month prognosis. He has numerous issues which wouldn’t necessarily be apparent in photos and we’ve got lots of photos of him looking happy and healthy.

I think it is fair to say that their are seriously ill people who look happy and healthy, even when they are dying. This is just my gut feeling about Moth, that he does not have an illness that as serious as Sally describes in her books.

Ros Hemmings said she didn't remember when the embezzlements began (although she did say something about the business making less money after Sally started working there?)

I've always wondered if Sally went into the company because she knew that Martin was the kind of rather unorganized person you could embezzle from - the coincidence of her being made redundant from her former job shortly after the Hemmings' former bookkeper retired was just so neat.

So it would have been really interesting to know when she started. But most likely she started small and got more reckless over time.

You may be right, I suppose my comment is based on the public getting bored easily and new stories being investigated. Personal health and illness are touchy issues and confidential. You're probably right that the consequences of this will affect publishers - the book buying public may be cynical about books promoted as real life.

I really wish walking did have semi-miraculous powers as the wear and tear of age can be hard to bear.

Yes, photos prove nothing. Very sorry to hear re: OH.

PP was wondering why John presented differently to Moth in general demeanour. My point that John was distressed & couldn’t walk easily to shops. He was afflicted in here & now but only a snapshot ofc. Everyone presents differently of course.

John and wife were particularly upset as felt personally misled & this is maybe what’s particularly apparent in clip not that one more visibly ill or upset by illness than another.

Absolutely. I agree. And that’s why I think the benefits thing is significant. However I can see why it could be very very dodgy for the Observer to go down the route of continuing to question his health.

Well, or the younger generation saw their parents’ generation/the wider family being, as they saw it, exploited by S and T Walker, and, possibly having said ‘Gosh, Mum/Dad/Uncle X, you’re not still putting up with crap from S and T, are you?’ for years, were actually pleased when the story broke and there was objective proof that S and T weren’t lovable rogues or whatever.

I can think of situations in my own wider family and even more so in my DH’s wider family where ‘Oh, that’s just the way X is’ means considerable exploitation is at play.

When you hear her reading these sections (bluebells, woods etc), she uses a tone of voice, from her parents to her, that is a mixture of scolding, weariness, exasperation, disappointment, annoyance etc.
As we are dependent on her narrative, who knows what really happened - but the tone of voice and attitude - and overall pattern of interactions might be more instructive in understanding the type of parenting than the words/corrections per se. So listening to her, you get the impression of a childhood with little encouragement or nurture, and lots of cold, non-attuned criticism.
Mind you, imo SalRay is a poor narrator/actress with a limited emotional range so all of this is to be taken with a pinch of the white stuff. Most of her dialogue sections are read with a mixture of scolding, weariness, exasperation etc.
Also, I agree that she did apparently ignore her parents’ instructions and rules so was possibly just infuriating.

(Incidentally, wondering if any other audiobook listeners get irritated with the way she says “No…..” when answering questions? It’s always a kind of whiny downward cadence.)

I know I keep banging on about it, but if they didn’t claim the benefits they were entitled to, their circumstances in TSP would appear to be a lifestyle choice rather than a necessity and that’s the route I think the Observer could explore ( in a kind of impersonal way ) by pointing out the help which is actually available.

And someone in Polruan whose blogpost (I think about seeing the film) has been linked a couple of times on here also first knew them and Sally and Tim, but does make some reference to knowing her later on as ‘Rain or Wind’, though I can’t figure out from the context whether that’s someone just mishearing ‘Raynor Winn’ or a local joke based on the amount of windswept weather in TSP.

@Choux

I forgot to say I love your description of TimMoth:

'she married a good looking layabout'

Sums him up very well.

I keep forgetting to ask - what did the nephew (?) Say in the now-deleted LinkedIn post?

I've never seen them as unintentionally homeless or without access to Social Security benefits. There are places to get help as seen in that article I posted a while back about a couple who got help and advice from the Salvation Army. Of course the basic safety net benefits are hard to live on but it's possible until they got sorted out, i.e. SalRay got a job.

An Observer article pointing out they had a choice may not be very interesting to readers but what's already been investigated is bad enough.

Well, I suppose if we go back to small interactions on the SWCP which were clearly ‘glumwashed’ in TSP, like the meeting with the friendly Australians at Fat Apples (for which we have their account, both at the time in their blog, and later on) there seems to be a clear pattern of turning benign or neutral encounters into self-serving negativity designed to garner sympathy for our underdog heroes.

So what appears to have been a nice encounter with friendly Australian backpackers in a welcoming cafe/campsite (certainly that’s how the Parsons saw it) is turned into an encounter with cosseted people with money for two all-day breakfasts and hotels in bad weather, and superficial enough to be worried about hair highlights, who just don’t get the Walkers’ hardship. And an inexpensive night on a nice wild camping site is turned into ‘I would have loved to stay at the FA sanctuary all winter, using the cold water tap and outside loo, but we’d have been bad for business.’ And the story of the Australians being ready to dump their tent and stay in B and Bs from now on puzzled the Parsons enough to actually email SW after the book came out and they recognised themselves to ask.

It’s possible she’s applied a similar glumwash filter to her childhood. Her parents appear as distant, scolding figures. I don’t think we ever encounter them other than in the context of them telling her not to do something, whether that’s climbing a tree, going into the woods, or throwing in her lot with ‘rebellious’ Tim. She’s always the free spirit of nature they’re trying to entrap with their joyless rules.

We know there are elements of omission and embellishment at play in her childhood, too — her older sister and the extended family she lived with are deleted, and her father has become a tenant farmer rather than the herdsman/stockman he was. I think we can safely assume it’s a highly subjective and partial account.

Exactly. Nearly EVERYone who speaks to her is critical and cross.

Note to self: Stop trying to understand an unreliable narrator.

I had wondered as to why it is Moth that does the degree, but then realised that if SW had start the law degree, she may not be eligible for the student loan. If Moth was as bad as she said, then surely it would be better for her to get the qualification seeing as she had "no work experience".

I also wondered why in Polruan, she didn't do some volunteer work because as with Moth (and me), it can sometimes lead to permanent paid work and it at least shows that you are capable of more than sitting on clifftops, feeling sorry for yourself.

I suspect they won’t be careful with the money and will fail to secure their future by buying a property. It’s very evident that TW has expensive tastes particularly in clothing.

Afternoon all. I hope you're all doing well today. I've been catching up and will respond properly to some specific posts, including on the health discussions, a bit later if you will bear with me.

Not sure about the between thread name changes as it just gives me something else to remember! Some of you are getting as bad as the Walker/Wyn/Winns with all your nom de plumes! I particularly like @indignantfrother however! Can you imagine sitting in a waiting room and the receptionist announces 'Dr Indignant-Frother will see you now'?! Yes, you did miss a trick @Featherbeds but luckily I have included glumwashing in the OP for posterity.

Glad to see that the last thread was left in a shipshape fashion before departure, thank you all, especially this time's link pirate @AlertCat . Only one sock left behind, and we all know who that belongs to. Without his head he didn't have a lot to say for himself about it.

Will be back a bit later. In the meantime, be careful out there. There be sharks.

And per previous posts, the house that they chose to rent after leaving Haye, must be costing a fair bit. It is not as if they knew they would need somewhere secluded at that time.

He could be the most sartorially elegant tramp in town. Maybe they will go urban next time.

Yes, these threads at times remind me of novels with spectacularly unreliable narrators like Molly Keane’s brilliant black comedy Good Behaviour, where the reader knows far more than the unreliable narrator, and where a murder, a servant giving her employer hand-jobs, an unsuccessful attempt to end a crisis pregnancy, a gay affair etc all take place under her nose without her noticing/allowing herself to notice, as she tells a self-exonerating story in which she’s blameless and beloved, a paragon of ‘good behaviour’. The reader has to read against the grain to see what’s really going on.

SW’s real literary instinct, it seems to me, is knowing how to turn any turn of RL events into something designed to get the reader rooting for the Walkers. The FA encounter with the Australian bloggers is interesting because it shows us how different the ‘raw material’ can be.

I know I’ve speculated about this several threads ago, but can you imagine the pressure this puts on the Walkers’ relationship? I mean, maybe they are absolutely loved-up twin souls who are bonded ever closer by this whole tissue of lies and half-truths and fame, but, conversely, if either changed their mind about how to handle things, or had an affair, or one wanted to come clean and one didn’t, or there was a dispute about money, the consequences would be messy.

Possibly the next book could be about how they were made homeless when they had no more income because of CH and those unfair mumsnetters

I think the fact that they had a choice is very interesting.The lack of money for food, accommodation etc is central to the story. Readers may not be aware that help would have been available to them and that they apparently chose not to take it- personally I’m really interested in WHY they didn’t claim what they were entitled to. Why would you rather choose to basically starve yourself and your terminally ill partner? Seems very odd to me.