Thread 16: 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

More from The Observer:
‘Hope is extinguished’: CBD patients respond to Salt Path...
The real Salt Path | The Observer (The Slow Newscast)
I will link to two more Observer videos in the first post of this thread.

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 fifteen 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.

Yes, it really is Thread 16.

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

This is what I wondered....because she also signed the NDA, could she use that as a rather convenient excuse for having to hide the truth?

SW has mentioned a couple of times that when she found out she'd have to appear in person as part of publicity for the book, she tried to get her manuscript back.. she cited her aversion to speaking in public as the reason (or something like that) but maybe she was simply worried someone would recognise her

And their respective siblings seemed to do ok for themselves too.

Martin Hemmings died in 2012.

No matter how well read or middle class something has gone wrong in her moral make up to have made her take that first step as an embezzler and to go on to happily commit petty theft.

What I found difficult to stomach after CH's article was SW's holier than thou attitude, which pervades much of TSP.

She portrays herself and Moth as latter day saints in the battle against an unfair system of which they are tragic victims. It's that which sticks in my craw.

The middle-class veneer is what enables it.
Whilst a shopkeeper might worry when a gaggle of noisy teen lads on a school trip burst into the shop, they are less likely to watch a middle-aged middle class mum and her quirkily dressed hubby like a hawk, but who is stealing the fudge?

I know we've had a laugh about these fudge bars but they're almost like an obsession. Even small shops along the way have a small stand of apples, plums, oranges.

She seems to have a big thing about food. Children always want ice creams, OAPs have cream teas or a whole portion of fish and chips each.

Portions that other people have are vast, or a mound ....

I don’t think that works, though, because they’re shabby and weatherbeaten enough to be viewed as ‘tramps’ on more than one occasion, and on two occasions homeless people apparently recognise them as fellow-homeless. Which would invite active suspicion in shops, if anything. (Though quite how that works alongside Moth continually being mistaken for a well-known touring poet, who very much does not resemble a tramp, is another mystery.)

Mind you, I’m not sure where people are getting the idea that either of the Walkers are particularly well read. Are people making that all-important copy of Beowulf do a lot of work?

@Poltroon Mind you, I’m not sure where people are getting the idea that either of the Walkers are particularly well read. Are people making that all-important copy of Beowulf do a lot of work?

I've wanted to ask that question, for ages? I've only ever heard of them having one book between them and she rarely mentions the literature associated with the area except when it is in Paddy.

From what I've read already, it appears that - in the approx. 6 years SW was employed as the Hemmings P/T bookkeeper - she must have had numerous opportunities to divert funds, either to their private bank account or to a "tin box under the bed".
Chloe H's findings which appeared in the first Observer article stated that the Hemmings had discovered SW had forged MH's signature on business a/c cheques (allegedly to pay for the Walker's own purchases) and had also created fake invoices - presumably for (imaginary) goods/services supplied to the Estate Agent/Surveyors business - with the payment in settlement going to the fake business i.e. SW's private account. (? is this possible, it's quite a sophisticated deception.)
Then on the payments in side, surely the £600 cash handed over to SW for banking wasn't the first payment by that means in 6 years? Payments in kind have also been mentioned (two lobsters!) also that Martin Hemmings sometimes agreed to "write off" a debt where the customer was having difficulty in settling the bill. What if, after the debt having been written off, the customer subsequently made a cash payment (? diverted to the "tin box".)
The Hemmings initial investigation into the business accounts revealed a shortfall of £9k. They seemed to arrive at that figure quite quickly but it must have taken some time to go back through the accounts year by year to arrive at the £64k as reported in the press.
Not accusing anyone of anything - just pointing out that where cash transactions are involved, mistakes can easily be made, either accidentally or on purpose!
And I suspect the WW's legal team's advice, when the Observer story broke, was "you're in a hole so STOP DIGGING!"

I don't believe she stole any fudge. I believe this was added to the story to convey (a) a sense of desperation and (b) an "honest" admission of a petty crime to help cement the idea of the story as a believable, "this all happened" warts and all story. In other words, convince people this petty crime happened (among all the other "brutally honest" things RW included, which she has jokingly suggested in interviews that she was perhaps too honest had she known so many people would read it) and they will hopefully not question the authenticity of anything else.

@WhoDaresWinns thank you for the date, if i MH died in 2012, Salray would no longer have had a non disclosure agreement with MH, it is an important element as@Cornishwafer says, Salray could try to use that as an excuse, maybe RH showed the non disclosure agreement to Chloe H.

But Mr Hemmings business hadn't been making money for several years. Sally paid back the £9,000 soon after she was questioned about it.

I mean, SW talks about reading Watership Down and Ring of Bright Water in her childhood, but that’s hardly unusual for a child of her generation, especially a rather withdrawn, solitary one, as she represents herself as being, and she is asked to write the introduction for a reissued Copsford by Walter C Murray during TWS, but she doesn’t strike me as in any way an avid reader.

When books come up in interviews or her books, it’s only ever to bring in an heavily-scripted anecdote about her own life. When she was asked for a feature on The Bookery to write about a book that had changed her life, she chooses Marilyn French’s The Women’s Room, but doesn’t really say anything about it other than a vague comment about it being ‘feminist’ and her mother burning it — it’s important because she buys it on a day trip to Oxford with Moth, ‘an unbelievably beautiful young man who had exploded into my life in a long army trenchcoat and riding boots, his long hair a mat of blond, eco-warrior mystery’ and it apparently gives her permission to make her own choices : ‘ I ran away and married my eco-warrior and over 30 years later were still living life on our own terms.’

And the rest of the £64 the Hemmingses eventually concluded she’d stolen, which MH reported to the police, who brought her in for questioning, only she’d done a runner before they could charge her?

I've seen this 'well-read' thing being said often but I don't know where it comes from either.

I'd read that though as £64k they could show that she had taken easily.

There could well have been more, that she knew if a full investigation went on that more could be found. In which case she may have been very keen that no formal investigation took place because that amount wasn't going to get smaller.

I don’t believe much of what SalRay tells us! I could believe homeless people being accepting of them as homeless, I am less sure people shout “tramps” at them and hurry away in disgust. People tend to stare right through the homeless.
I believe she’d steal fudge because I know she stole money.

She may appear well-read because she talks about being well-read, her love of reading, and references a few highbrow books.

https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/scottish-news/missing-texan-woman-found-living-35769059#amp-readmore-target
I bring you a thruple of wild campers 🏕

Yes, I think that’s perfectly possible. It was clearly a small, informal operation, with lots of latitude and not much oversight or formal processes, so the opportunities would have been rife.

It was found that the figure of £600, then £9k were just the tip of the iceberg. I recall Mr H had help from the bank manager to go through the accounts and the total was £64k taken over some years

If I go with this theory, I would then see her expression of guilt in taking the second bus, to Westward Ho!, would throw me off scenting that she didn't walk that much anyway!

Agree. Which makes the deception even worse. I'm not surprised MH just wanted his money back and to avoid a court case, especially as the children would have been what, teenage at that point? It would have been in the local paper if it had gone to court and he obviously felt ashamed (poor man) of not realising how he'd been tricked. And yes, news would have travelled fast and most people in the community would have known anyway that she'd left under a cloud, shall we say. Especially as it wasn't just MH who was owed money. Don't forget the garage owner, not to mention the guy who saw them disappear in the middle of the night. In my small community everyone knows everyone as most people went to the same school, are related, have worked together, are in the same chapel etc etc, so as soon as SW was revealed as SW, pretty much everyone remembered what had happened.

@WhoDaresWinns in answer to your question a few pages back, I've got a subscription to the British Newspaper Archive. It's not got great coverage of Wales, though. I did find the young SW country show articles that someone else mentioned, though. Was there something specific you were after?

Not putting it past her as SW seems a little odd but stealing fudge bars seems a strange thing for a middle-aged woman to insert in a narrative for the purpose of seeming relatable.

I have a sub to Find My Past, with access to newspapers; I think the coverage is slightly different from the BNA site so some times things are found on one site but not on the other. It does depend as well on how good their OCR search engines are too, as some of the older typefaces can be tricky! (Not usually an issue in the 20th century of course!)