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.

Either way they seemed to have since worked out that the margins on high end men's and women's fashion ware are better than on 25p bars of fudge being periodically filched by down at heel back packers!

The Beach House Rock

Yes, that was exactly the point I was, somewhat clumsily, trying to make. And the suggestion of a "tin box under the bed" was made partly tongue-in-cheek but also as a serious suggestion because there's no way of tracing it's contents origin. There has also been some discussion on these threads as to what tasks were entrusted to SW as a P/T bookkeeper. She must have either drawn up the annual accounts herself or at the very least handed over the books she was responsible for to a/n/other to prepare them. If the bank manager was called in to assist it suggests there was no accountant (except SW) and also suggests that the Hemmings were desperate to discover the full extent of SW's misdeeds.

I could well believe she stole them.

I can also believe that that there is a more sophisticated level of deception that I wouldn't have come up with. It would be an answer to some of my questions.

The other thing that I think is quite telling is that when Mrs Hemmings told the story of how SW had turned up at her house with the 9k cheque, crying and claiming she'd had to sell her Mother's things to raise the funds, she said SW had claimed Mr Hemings had lent her the money.

If this is true (and Mrs Hemmings seems very credible) what a nasty little grenade for SW to throw in to a family dynamic in order to save her own skin.

I think that’s the kind of thing that prompted the ‘unflinchingly honest’ tagline. Which means essentially ‘I include details that make me look slightly bad’.

Hypocritical and ironical. Everything she criticises in those books is petty, snide or a backhanded compliment. She even Justified stealing the fudge bars to her readers and wanted them to think it was ok. This from a woman who embezzled money and then forced the victims to sign away their rights to have her convicted. The boo hoo “I had to sell my mother’s wedding dress!” line. She has no scruples at all when she manipulated people. I have a hunch that she had something emotional over Martin Hemmings to make him feel sorry for her. She seems to have text book covert narcissism.

In the statement she put out, her defensive tone about 'mistakes' and 'pressure' shows what we are dealing with here.

She trots out these excuses so easily: the financial crisis of 2008, the financial crisis of 2013. When people have raised criticisms in the past they have been put in their place by being told, by others, that they don't know what it is like to be homeless, have no money, etc.

Then we add in the whole health issue and it seems, at least, churlish to question anything. Is there a word for a mass of people having been, in Bill Coles' words, 'gaslit'?

I didn't suggest it was inserted to be seemingly relatable, but to be seemingly unrelatable. Just look at how the admission is dealt with by readers in reviews - some deplore it, while others see it as an act of desperation in a situation they've never found themselves in. Neither is relatable but it has a narrative purpose.

It was the thing that sealed it for me in the book. I was becoming more and more disenamoured with them by the page but the theft and the campsite incident I found unforgivable. I was pleased to see so many other reviewers felt the same.

I would have thought it would be quite rare for embezzlers to be able to get their hands on enough money to pay back the person they stole from. SalRay lucked out there, and that was fortunate for the Hemmings too.

I have a distant relative who stole some £400k in similar circumstances (bookkeeper in a small family business), due to an online gambling addiction, and they were sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison. Nobody could believe it - the theft or the amount. And although they were found guilty, the business owner never recovered any money, as far as I know.

The WalkerWinns seem to have stayed in the area for a few years, when everyone must have known. I guess the nondisclosure agreement was mainly aimed at not being prosecuted.

I think it's possible that SW could be one of those complex characters that perpetual victims often can be that viewed herself as some poor soul that random people saw the good in ...the actors that gave them a lift (apparently didn't happen), the lady offering the flat in the chapel, the cider farmer...I think she aspired to be someone that others took to. It's possible she would like to imagine herself as someone Mr Hemmings took pity on and lent money to....and that's maybe the tail she told family and friends. The relatity was possibly quite different.
Who knows.

This is a great point. She doesn't talk about literary influences, writers she admires, reading as something either she or Moth does when they're at home. I think in the interview where it's mentioned it's Moth who says that they read a lot and like to analyse stories. And on the SWCP you've got (without really thinking about it & only really knowing the south part) du Maurier, Christie, Hardy, Austen (at Lyme)... I'm not sure what to make of that absence but it doesn't support any attempt to make them seem like avid readers. Though they do go to Moonfleet of course!

Gosh @SwetSwetSwet a £400k embezzlement only got 3.5 years in prison? In that case Sally might not have got jail time for a ‘mere’ £64k.

Also one thing about books that bugs me... she has this story about how as a child she wanted to write a book with a penguin on the spine. I wanted to write proper books as well, when I was a child, but the books were obviously going to have puffins on the spine, because that's what children's books had in the 1970s and 1980s! The golden age of children's literature, thanks to the great Kaye Webb.

Yes, but we'll never know...

@cricketandwhodunnits Yes it is interesting you mentioned Moonfleet.

@WhoDaresWinns Where are you? You spotted it first.

@cricketandwhodunnits

Maybe they read a lot of crime novels or true crime. Makes sense.

I just googled, to look at past cases of uk woman who have embezzled money in recent years, there is a lot of difference in sentences between the cases, not necessarily relating to the amount embezzled, a similar case resulted in a custodial sentence of 22 months, some received suspended sentences and community service. The cases looked on more harshly involved embezzlement over a number of years by trusted employees.

Maybe, though they didn't seem interested in Agatha Christie country... The very bizarre conversation about John le Carre (whom they haven't heard of?) suggests they don't read spy stories, at least!

@TheBrandyPath yes, the earlier discussion of Moonfleet and the swannery, which I now can't find, reminded me of that exception.

That, for me, is a calculated ‘Look at me being honest about the shameful lengths to which I was driven by homelessness (so it’s not really my fault, and you’re insensitive if you condemn me for stealing fudge bars when I was hungry, like the people who called us tramps and let their dogs wee on our tent)’ moment. It’s the equivalent of a ‘sorry not sorry’ apology.

Oh I'm wrong, there's a du Maurier reference, the most obvious one you could have but it's there. "Where Daphne du Maurier was a tenant and dreamt of Manderley, we lay homeless and penniless under the stars".

If you look at where the Welsh house is, it's pretty separate from the main village & local towns. There are loads of places like that near Pwllheli, where the address is technically a town or village but actually the house is up a remote lane and effectively isolated. So I think they did what they're doing now; hunkered down where no one could see them and waited it out until they couldn't stay any longer, when they zipped off anonymously. Similar happened in the cider farm. They disappeared leaving nothing more than a note for Bill, though they did at least give him notice.

I find fascinating parallels with Capt Tom's family, who also tried to brazen it out (thinking of SW's 'rebuttal' statement here). That didn't go well for the Ingram-Moores either, as they also doubled down rather than realising why people were so upset and angry.

That's a very good point @TonstantWeader I keep forgetting that their house was quite tucked away.

I thought that too.

The Puffin books were around when I was a young lad in the 50s - showing my age here! They cost 2/6 (half a crown) pre decimal. (Eight to the £.) I was an avid reader then and they had a good selection of titles both fiction and non-fiction. "Worzel Gummidge & Saucy Nancy" I especially remember as Saucy Nancy was a ships figurehead who longed to return to the sea! My non-fiction favourite was an abridged version of "The Radium Woman" (Marie Curie) by her daughter Eve.
When I read TSP I thought then that RW meant "Puffin" rather than "Penguin" but now I think this may have been yet one more "invention" of hers that she got wrong.