Thread 15: 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 14 Observer items currently available on their online 'The real Salt Path' page: The real Salt Path | The Observer

4 more from The Observer:
‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...

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

(Live/online event)

The Observer YouTube Channel: The Observer UK - YouTube

Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement: Raynor Winn

Thread One ^www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/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: 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: 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?

Thread 14: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5388981-thread-14-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 get the background from at least some of the Observer items above before posting. There are currently a number of 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. Remember, even Hollywood rabbits attract the odd flea. 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 fourteen 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.

#Pinchofsaltpath
#Fudge
#Cider
#OurChloe
#OurSimon
#Correspondents
#Salray
#Timmoth
#MistakesWereMade
#EmbellishedBollox
#JustBollox
#DriveByScolding
#Glumwashing
#ThereBeSharks
#Scones
#NakedHikers
#TurquoiseGString
#BudleighSalterton
#SallyForth
#YesItReallyIsThread15
#Rabbits

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

Has anyone tried visiting the British Library legal deposit service to see if they have a copy of HTNDDD?

Their website has details suggesting that the book *should" have been sent to them if published in the UK.
https://www.bl.uk/services/legal-deposit

Apologies if this was answered in the mists of time as I haven't read all the threads...

You would be ASTONISHED at how many fiction authors (who basically lie professionally) are ND. I am, as are many of my author friends. Several are dyslexic too. I actually think that most authors might well have a degree of neurodivergence, because seeing the world 'sideways' means that you can have an original (not to say unique) view of events that many people would regard as bland and boring.

And I agree that the final book will emerge quietly, because it's already been paid for, but I don't think the Walkers will be seen in public again for a good while. I think they will keep their heads down and try to blend into the background, for the reputation of their family if not for themselves.

I checked the Bodleian and it doesn’t appear to have one.

The screenshot (probably still awaiting MN approval) from the webpage I linked to said you could go in person to their [? British Library ] sites in St Pancras or Boston Spa to request a print item, so this might be something different?

@doubtfulcat once you've known one or 2 of these types (and escaped/had therapy) it's hard not to see it in others. When you're in it you can't see it! Happens to the brightest and most resourceful women. The book is unreliable narration/fiction but through the instagrams and interviews there's so little of him as to seem heavily curated. (controlled) 'Too nice' (in public) is unfortunately one of the signs!

I’d be wary of trying to ‘diagnose’ TW psychologically, but I have wondered if it was significant that SW, who in RL embezzled from the Hemmingses, wrote a self-exonerating semi-fictional alternative backstory for the walk, and in it essentially blamed Tim for investing with ‘Cooper’.

Sorry Vroom, I wasn't saying ND folk can't lie. Totally agree can be extremely creative! Being creative isn't lying for personal gain and manipulating those around you. I don't think fictionalised accounts based on true events is lying - it's art. Totally happy with that myself.
As said in my other posts I think most people just have a problem with them publicly speaking out on these fictionalised issues/events and perpetuating the victim narrative especially now we know they're not true. But also they probably do think they are victims (see my other points about covert narc/codependent/gifters)

Someone’s just uploaded the entire movie for free on YT. Gillian Anderson has really captured Sally’s exasperated tone to a tee.

@TheBrandyPath "I don't know if it is my imagination (I have to use it when looking at TSP as I find it boring) but there is a scene that interests me. It is when Aphrodite arises from the sea foam and stands there dripping to the emasculation of the men."

Yes, this bit is odd. There's a hot girl at the beach and... That's it.
Another cringey, pointless anecdote. Or is it to reinforce that Sally feels frumpy and to make her seem relatable?

I think someone, possibly several threads ago, was making similar odd passages (Grant’s ‘beauties’?) into an argument for TSP being a work of dual authorship, as they seemed weirdly pervy and male gaze-y to have been written by a woman writer.

It is a weird passage, I agree, but as SW doesn’t seem to have much ability to write character unless it’s a vitriolic little sketch of someone huffing, yomping or retracting their dog lead from the ‘tramps’, it’s possible it’s supposed to be comic light relief, with the comment about the heart pills and whatever Big Dave says as the punchline?

She arises from the sea foam - ok
stand there dripping- ok

dripping to the emasculation of the men - eh?

Male gaze. Hmmmmm. There are quite a lot of gorgeous young women in the book described in objectifying ways. Recent discussion has really made me think - is TSP Moth's version not SW's?

Sorry just realised someone else said exactly this. My possibly additional point - the book reads differently if one sees it as TW/Moth reinventing his story.

I have always found it weird (even before all this broke) that the "being mistaken for Simon Armitage" thing operates as if SW/Ray wasn't there at all! Surely if this were real the biggest clue that he wasn't SA would be that he was accompanied by a woman about his age... It's as if for this bit of TW/Moth's fantasy life SW/Ray is irrelevant.

Aphrodite the goddess of procreation - created from the castration of Uranus and born of the sea foam - appears before these emasculated men....

Take your heart pill, Doug, and look the other way.’
‘It’s all right, mate, if you pass out I can do CPR.’ Dave and Julie sat on the other side of the picnic bench....... ‘Bloody hell, old men, eh? Don’t want to get old, me, angina and diabetes, arthritis and stuff like that. No, I’m just going to keep walking, then we’ll be all right, won’t we, Ju?’
‘Hopefully.’
‘We all hope for that.’ Moth gave me a look that said, ‘Don’t say it.’ To anyone else he appeared to be just laughing and drinking tea.

I finished Simon's "Walking Away" last night. It seems that he has a (diagnosed) spinal condition that flared badly during the last part of the SWCP walk, meaning that he was basically living on painkillers and debating the wisdom of trying to "walk through it". His alternative plan at that point was to abandon the path and get taxis to the remaining scheduled poetry readings so he didn't let people down.

Fortunately and is sometimes the way with back issues, it improved enough (he thinks a night on a floor helped) for him to finish and get across to the Scillies for the last and less demanding "bit".

I was struck by the fact that there are 3 solid pages at the end thanking everyone involved by name, the people who had put him up and arranged readings and food, schoolchildren he'd read to, random buskers he'd enjoyed, a sand artist who showed him how he worked, people who'd walked with him for short periods.

I am also struck by the other paralells.

Not the topic under discussion but it annoyed me no end that Dave has one "quirky northern speech tic" per book and has to use it EVERY TIME HE SPEAKS, but the tic changes. In TSP it's saying "me" at the end of every sentence that begins or could begin with "I". In TWS as folk have pointed out upthread it's "like", like. Can't stand it, me - at least be consistent in your totally improbable dialogue, like.

Ooh well spotted. The “like” bugged me so much in TWS but it’s been years since I read TSP so I didn’t realise he was Dave-of-the-wandering-tics.

i suppose, in fairness, he knew this walk would be a book, and he had an assistant who laid out his schedule, connected with all the hosts etc in advance, so he’d have had some kind of written record of who hosted him when etc, and he is clear on keeping voice notes during the day and writing up his notes every night, whereas the Walkers don’t have names, or hardly ever, and aren’t note taking because it wasn’t, when walked, we are given to believe, a book project.

I’ve read his Walking Away, too, and my main takeaway in relation to TSP is that a well-nourished, averagely fit man, only carrying his lunch and waterproofs, found many sections of the SECP grindingly tough, long before his back trouble flared up. It makes the idea of a man with a condition that affects his mobility walking it in an inadequate diet while carrying a heavy pack, sound pretty much impossible.

Yes, he does! It’s maddening. It’s like those scripts for medical tv dramas where apparently the scriptwriters just leave spaces for medical content to be inserted by medical consultants by writing

Meredith Grey: MEDICAL MEDICAL
Meredith turns off the life support.
Enter Miranda Bailey: MEDICAL MEDICAL

Dave could just be given one repeated line, throughout all three books. ‘I’m Big Northern Dave, me, like.’

I’ve read his Walking Away, too, and my main takeaway in relation to TSP is that a well-nourished, averagely fit man, only carrying his lunch and waterproofs, found many sections of the SECP grindingly tough, long before his back trouble flared up. It makes the idea of a man with a condition that affects his mobility walking it in an inadequate diet while carrying a heavy pack, sound pretty much impossible.

I totally agree @SunlitUpland it is exactly what struck me.

I think SA was walking much further distances each day than Raymoth but I know what you mean!

Yes, 13/14 miles a day, sometimes more, but it's really clear he was finding the terrain hard going, the constant "ups and downs" of the landscape. I got the feeling he found the Pennines much easier. He said at the end of the book there would be no more "long walks".

@DoubtfulCat

Very insightful.

@LetsBeSensible

Timoth comes across as the kind of louche man who counts on his good looks and charm carrying him through life. It looks as if that's worked most of the time.