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.

Yes, I can imagine there must be some awkward conversations going on in the Walker household…. However much they present themselves as soul mates, they must be feeling the pressure now and it wouldn’t be a surprise if it got messy

Well, I hope if they go urban, Tim will alter his look appropriately. Handlebar moustache, man bun, ironic tattoos, sharp suit over a vintage band tshirt, or something.

Sorry, also, @DisappointedReader, I don’t NC all the time to mess with your head or disguise my evil, I just do it roughly weekly so that I don’t have to worry about someone recognising me from an anecdote/turn of phrase or being able to advance-search everything I’ve posted since 2011. And because these threads are so long, I’ve always NCed during one, but obviously continued to post under the ‘old’ name on them until I realise on a new thread I’m now posting as someone else.

@Tealeaf3

'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.'

That's how it's seemed to me but I have to be mindful that I know a lot about long term benefits claiming and homelessness whilst others won't. How interesting this would be to the public is hard to say. There is still a dreadful culture of hostility towards Social Security claimants, the homeless and the sick and disabled from some quarters.

The WWs may have stayed with friends or family and perhaps they did claim benefits or go into a shelter/B@B via the council. Or had savings. But that wouldn't fit with the narrative they've presented.

That's not a gut feeling, though, the medical letters Sally Walker released say he doesn't have an illness anything like she depicts in the books.

Oh to be a fly on the wall

Just reposting for the person who asked what their nephew said about them.

@OpenThatWindow

I expect that if questioned about this Salray would somehow manage to make herself sound heroic “ we didn’t want to scrounge off the state” type of thing. However, she openly states in TSP that they were living off tax credits they were no longer entitled to ( you must be working 30+ hrs a week to qualify) so I don’t think that would wash.

They could have prodded the doctor into suggesting CBD. Easy enough, especially if the doctor doesn't know what it might be. Just drop in a couple of mentions about this condition that you read about that might have some of the same symptoms and say that you're worried that it might be that, and just keep badgering until the doctor says something like "well, yes, there's a faint possibility that it might be CBD" (if the doctor ever said any such thing) and then run with that. Just keep poking and prodding until you get a vague acknowledgement, and then lean on that until others believe it too.

Thinking about whether or not there was a long term plan involved here...

Not that there was a Bond villain type long con planned, but weren't the kids at college by 2008? It may be that they had a long term plan of sorts for their empty nest life and when the embezzlement turned everything upside down they had to regroup. And in working out how to proceed aspects of that plan were used.

I only say this because it struck me that they bought property in France around the same time as Moth's brother, and they started Gangani publishing with a novel ready to go at the same time as the brother published his novel. The brother had been keeping a blog of his renovations in France, and perhaps Raymoth were doing something similar, or planned to. They also had another novel in the pipeline.

I don't know how it all ties together, but I suspect at one stage there was a plan to move to France and write when the kids were gone, but their debts became so huge there was no money to realise that plan. Then the 2008 crash came, and the house in Wales lost a lot of its' value. And the rest we know, after a fashion.

As there’s no medical treatment for CBD it’s not as if the doctor would have been accused of giving out inappropriate medication if, in the future, it proved not to be CBD. So a kind of handy diagnosis.

I mean I'm not saying that this is what happened, obviously, but we've raised a lot of possibilities on these threads and this is just another one that occurred to me. And just now, I'm prepared to consider almost anything possible!

But I think anyone reading it recognises that benefits were available. SW even acknowledges that council emergency accommodation would have been available, had they pursued it. She even acknowledges that the obvious thing for her, the able-bodied spouse, to do, was to get a job. The whole rationale of why they chose to go on a long walk instead is very hand-wavy in TSP.

It makes no sense at all on a rational level, other than the reader is aware that they’re reading the early chapters of a best-selling nature redemption memoir, so obviously our protagonists don’t go meekly into a council hostel, claim benefits and look for work. They strike out heroically, irrationally but magnificently, and do something mad. Asking too many question about why is a bit like sitting in the front row of Hamilton and saying ‘Why are they rapping??? I don’t get it!’ You go along with the genre.

I wonder if he was threatened with legal action by SW/TW and that's why the comments were deleted?

And thank you!

I doubt it, somehow. The comments can’t have been up very long.

I’d vaguely imagined a change of heart about washing dirty family linen in public, a plea from another family member, or an understandable desire not to involve himself in a grubby news story when no one would have made the connection otherwise.

I suspect that he thought better of it. It really isn't appropriate to have such personal stuff in your LinkedIn profile.

Yes, that too. I mean, I don’t use LinkedIn, but it’s essentially a professional social networking site, not for personal stuff.

I think people like to believe that there's a wild romantic beautiful alternative to 'traditional homelessness '. I know someone who talks about going to live wild in the mountains if he was ever made homeless. Those sort of romantic alternatives simply don't exist in real life. But we like to believe that they do. I think that was part of TSP's pull. When really we know it was all just an extended hapless holiday.

It's a modern day fairy tale - with real fairies even making an appearance at the Minack in Iolanthe!

My gut feeling from the available pictures is that he seems a lot more happy about the situation than she is - there are puctures/videos of her where she looks like she is on the verge of tears with a forced smile, while he seems perfectly happy.
Maybe that's just their personalities, but I don't see it in older pictures.

And I still can't get over the fact that in one article he described her as 'the loving glue that keeps our family together' - I might be overinterpreting things, but that sounds more like a useful substance than a soulmate.

I sometimes wonder if SW suffers from mythomania!

What is Mythomania (Pathological Lying Disorder)? What Causes Mythomania?

This is the woman who claimed in a podcast she
A) worked for several years in the fines department of a court, and
B) studied for 2 years for a law degree
so one would expect her to be a little more savvy in financial and legal matters like benefits entitlements.

And while we generally agree the law degree is unlikely, the marriage certificate shows a job that makes A) seem perfectly possible.

They were living off tax credits they were no longer entitled to? Because they weren’t working 30+ hrs per week?
So who originally claimed the tax credits? Part-Timer bookkeeper and embezzler SalRay, or Master Plasterer who can’t work or get out of bed TimMoth?

So in the book she admits fraudulently claiming benefits! Wow. Do they repay them?

The crash was part of HDTDDD or similar?
The embezzlement piqued & more reckless before being found out. Why?

It got onto Mumsnet pretty quick, so he perhaps thought better of it.

He likely just wanted to get it off his chest as it had been made public.

It must have been difficult to know they were scoundrels but the literary world seemed to worship them.