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.

Well she will of course claim that "we had no choice because Moth's condition wasn't considered serious enough to get council housing". This might have been true as TW wasn't diagnosed with CBD/CBS until June 2015. So it's a sort of Catch-22 position for her to explain. When they set off on the SWCP in Aug 2013, TW was on pregabalin for pain relief but he hadn't been diagnosed with CBD so, to all intents and purposes, it wasn't that hazardous!

I think their attitude is more: "We're not the sort who live in council housing" and they couldn't face the gossip. In reality, the gossip they dreaded was about her crime.

We know that exercise has benefits for psychological and cardiovascular health but halting a brain disease? I wonder also if Timoth has been completely discharged from neurology services or if he still has check-ups? Serious illness often requires surveillance follow-up for years. As already discussed, Timoth's case is a dream for medical researchers.

Appropriation! That's the word I was looking for. Thanks

I love this idea. Guesses for what the Beowulf cover actually hides, then?

A small Premier League sticker album? 50 Shades of Grey? Deepak Chopra? How to Win Friends and Influence People? The Philosophy of Snoopy?

I was about to post the same thing. The beginning 30 seconds where she says he was diagnosed with terminal illness and they went to walk the SWCP her head is constantly saying No.

I think the attitude towards "tourists" is particularly egregious coming from someone who was a tourist themselves at that time. They hadn't lived in Cornwall before starting the walk. What did she think rocking up from elsewhere (Wales) to do the SWCP made them?

(At a guess, in her mind, bold adventurers in touch with the natural world and pitting themselves against the landscape. Just like lots of other tourists, Salray)

@AzureStaffy Strange that so many in the media went along with this and, as far as I know, didn't say to SalRay: "wasn't that risky with your husband so ill?"

Yes, it has had such an impact on other people - so irresponsible all round. This is why I shared the article earlier this morning. An extract:

But when Moth, who stops taking his medicine, is in some other, older sense ‘healed’ by nature, his once-shaking hands now able to brandish the tent over his head.......... it’s not just a convenient character arc – it’s real. Defying his diagnosis, Moth Winn is still alive today.

A Michelin I Spy at the Seaside book?

I'm another one surprised that she'd NEED an autocue or to read a scripted passage about her own book. Most authors won't shut up when someone asks them about their latest - they kind of get the mouth in gear and off they go.

But then, I only really know fiction authors.

Thanks for sharing. I think this is precisely why the "true story" claims matter as previously discussed on these threads, irrespective of memoirs/non-fiction generally bending the truth/timelines to fit a compelling narrative.

TSP claims to be based on real events and this article shows how important those claims are. Indeed, we now know (and suspect) that much of it isn't real but actually just written as fiction for convenient character arcs, plot points etc.

I do write and memorise a script when I have to do a short piece to camera about my research - precisely because I know that otherwise I won't shut up, and won't get to the key talking points within the time available. I don't blame SW for using a script. But the script itself is pretty bad, and SW doesn't say it like she believes it...

True, and I have been known to practice a short piece if, for example, my publishers ask me to do a 'piece to camera' about my newest release. But I try to make it LOOK as though I'm talking spontaneously, because if I can't show any joy or enjoyment in my work then why should I expect any reader to? But I think by this point SW has lost any joy in anything except taking the money and walking...

I do, now, think it is entirely a work of Fiction, based on some aspects of their life.

I have never heard of 'a character arc' because I don't read Fiction in that way. So my questions now are based on what you proposed, and I have accepted, and what I think of as the 'superior deception'.

How does SalRay know how to write with these literary devices? The whole book has been planned with these dramas.

Exactly. What must her appearances be like at literary festivals etc if she can’t talk about her own book without an autocue?

I have previously been a Toastmaster which involves preparing and giving 7 minute speeches on a variety of topics to practise public speaking skills. Live in front of the other club members so not on camera in a field where you can do a few takes. If you practise and memorise your speech for a few hours you can make most of it sound natural and almost off the cuff. This looks like she got the script 10 minutes before the take.

The most accomplished public speaker I ever heard was a non fiction author and journalist about 15 years ago. I think it was Stephen Dubner co author of Freakonomics ( but it might have been a similar author popular about 15 years ago). He spoke for 45 minutes about his work and findings in front of an audience of 1,000 plus and sounded entirely natural as though I was having a solo chat with him. I watched a couple more of his talks on YT afterwards and he seemed to have an evolving script for each event so I recognized some portions from my event but then some elements / topics were taken out or slotted in to suit the audience, timing of event etc. He was such a good speaker.

Sally may not have natural speaking talent but with all the publicity she would do for each book she should be able to at least sound non scripted talking about her own book. Unless she deliberately wants to still appear like an accidental author to enhance her USP?

I think we could be forgiven for classing Raynor Winn as a fiction author too.

Or authors, depending upon who actually wrote the books.

Anyone who reads a lot (as SW has claimed to do) picks up the art of character development. You know that your character needs to be in a different (and usually better) place by the end of the book - because readers are reading for that upllft and positivity. So you create the whole book with that ending in mind and write gradually towards it, dropping in hints for the reader as to how it's happening along the way. You also put in background stuff.

Which is how you structure a fiction novel and is how SW structures her novels which are not meant to be fictional...

It must seem absurd now to those who got so caught up in the WalkerWinns' narrative. Sometimes very intelligent people let emotional responses rule them rather than logic and reason. But scammers can be compelling and this couple tapped into something that made a connection with many readers. Plus Penguin Random House's very powerful marketing.

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat dropping in hints for the reader

It is this that most interests me. It originated with what @SimoArmo said about the fudge theft. It takes us off the scent of the real, massive, theft.

When they catch the bus - she feels guilty. We are invited to think: don't be silly you are doing a fantastic job.

When they don't do the Isle of Portland because they are not 'purists'. Our eyes are taken away from the fact that they haven't done much of the walk anyway.

50 Grades of Salt?
The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill ill and poor and Came Down a Mountain cured and rich?

I have the kind of logical mind which makes watching films with me an absolute torture for others. I am constantly saying 'well, how does that work then? You just said X and now Y is happening, which wouldn't be the case if, as you said, X...' Plotholing, it's called and I do it in books too.

Which is why I am also amazed that real, sensible questions like those about factual matters to do with how WW got to X place or why they did Y when A would be more sensible - were never asked. The very simple question 'what made you think going off on a very long walk with a very ill husband was the only course of events to take?' never seems to have been raised. I wonder whether these questions were, in fact, asked, and just edited out because of the stream of consciousness waffle which seems to be SW's go-to answer.

In fairness, people have been appropriating the landscape since as long as there have been people, and writers here have been doing it in a very specific way since the Romantics. (SW's account of the two of them nearly dying in a mountain storm in the Highlands, but nonetheless staring enthralled at its magnificence, hand in hand, from their plastic survival bag, is 100% from the Romantic Sublime 'Beauty is Terror' playbook.)

But I do know what you mean. It's like she's rebranding the SWCP as ALL About Us and Our Quest in a very heavy-handed way: 'Oh, here's a heavily metaphorical peregrine, coming with a Big Message for us!' etc.

I mean, we all indulge in pathetic fallacy etc from time to time, but most of us do also recognise that while steep ascents and a thundering downpour may seem to us to be an external symbol of our individual Terrible Sadness, for someone else it's a muddy but happy wedding day or a day spent trying to amuse small children on a holiday caravan.

I think it's because her writing is rather clunky. (Though I also think that this was part of its appeal for its many devoted readers. I happened to catch some of Celebrity SAS last night, started watching for my annual round of 'Who on earth are these celebrities? And aren't the rugged Staff Sergeant/Instructor types arguably now as famous as the C-listers they shout at?', and you if you take out the Wonders of Nature stuff, RW could have scripted any of the stuff the final five contestants said about digging deep and finding themselves etc).

It's the classic 'Do a small thing to distract from the larger thing.'

I think it was in one of Robert Westall's YA novelsThe Scarecrows (which I must have read 40 years ago, so it must have been good to stay with me!) where an ex-army man tells a story to a boy about how he'd been supposed to launder, iron, polish his superior officer's dress uniform, shoes etc, and he'd left it too late to do it well, so he just polished all the small change that had been left in the pockets, and laid it all out on the bed with the shiny coins alongside, and the officer was so impressed at his attention to detail that never noticed that the uniform itself was a bit lacklustre.

That's what I think is going on with the elaborate wailing about 'cheating' when skipping bits of the path, or the self-accusation that, even when she discovers that she could have paid for the fudge and afforded the ferry fare, she doesn't go back and pay for the fudge (though I notice no guilt whatsoever is expressed for not paying in campsites, which involved a far larger sum of money.) It's 'Look at me being searingly honest about shoplifting fudge bars! Watch me make myself look bad (though unless you've been starving and homeless, don't dare condemn me!!). No one who is so unflinchingly honest about little things would dream of a larger scam...)

@YarrowYarrow But I do know what you mean. It's like she's rebranding the SWCP as ALL About Us and Our Quest in a very heavy-handed way: 'Oh, here's a heavily metaphorical peregrine, coming with a Big Message for us!' etc.

A peregrine hovered above me, yesterday evening. I was about halfway between St Michael's Chapel and Q Adelaide's Grotto.

Shall I take it as an endorsement of our review of The Life and Works of Sally Walker?

I rather suspect it was thinking more - that looks too big to carry off in my talons, and not very tasty-looking anyway!

Indeed. I remember commenting back in the mists of time about their appropriation of other things cultural, personal and professional. Some examples:

Being the daughter of a tenant farmer
Being Eco activists
Being Welsh
Having a Botany degree
Being smallholders
Being publishers
Being farmers
Being 'of the land'
Being The Homeless
Being poor and desperate
Being rewilders
Being cider makers
Being 'at one with nature'
Being 'of Cornwall and the sea'
Having CBD
Being terminally ill with very short prognosis
Being part of the PSPA community
Being the grieving wife of the above three

I think I remember someone telling SA when he was walking the SWCP what he assumed was a tall tale about finding an escaped vulture sitting on a rock and giving it a sandwich, and that it had been flying around Cornwall for several days, giving everyone who saw it the impression they were witnessing an omen of their own demise?

I quite like the idea of the Walkers being shadowed by a hungry vulture. Though if it had actually happened, she'd probably have turned it into a Heavy-Handed Metaphor for Moth's Illness.