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.

Tim is a very charismatic and magnetic man. He is warm and welcoming and has a rock star presence. Jason Issacs responded to that.

Ooh, do you have experience of them in person? Tell us more

And, to be honest, having done my time shearing/fleece prepping, milking cows and looking after horses I would far rather work in retail! At least you're indoors and you don't get trodden on/knocked over (quite as often),

Met him at an event. Really liked him - which is what JI seemed to do. He is tall and handsome and had a real presence that draws you to him. She was very quiet.

Gosh, I think he’s a ‘type’ we’ve all probably met — well aware of his own good looks, used to the effect he has on people, particularly women, unable to see why he can’t construe all that charm and ability to make people like him into a life that doesn’t involve a humdrum 9 to 5.

Which, in fairness, he now has, by being the RL star of a best-seller.

I agree with you. My point is that the author Sally knew of some well known prejudices against older women and decided to make those applicable to Raynor (whose previous careers are magicked away). Forgive me but I have to split the two personalities on the page as I can only see Raynor Winn as Sally Walker’s projection, her alter ego. The truth is that Sally Walker could not use past work experiences on her CV nor ask for any references from previous employers. So, Raynor therefore, had to be a defeatist, in terms of seeking employment and the reader must be convinced and drawn in with sympathy for her even if we want to try and convince her otherwise and to support her. The reader knows that they were running some sort of guest house, so that alone brings a wealth of experience and knowledge of hospitality sectors, running a business and of course accounting. All of a sudden, we are supposed to believe that Raynor has forgotten this and can’t believe she will find employment… based on her age.
Moth’s diagnosis and the physical emotional toll this has on her, are the only explanations we can offer for her current state of mind. She is forgiven. Sally has cunningly been able to achieve that.

SW at a till in a tabard, stacking shelves or making chai lattes doesn’t fit the brand, though. It has to be windswept and nature-focused. Yes to fleece-packing and rewilding, no to Asda or being a dental receptionist.

I think I said this before but the wordless, non-book film scene where she asks for work in a coffee shop which has advertised for staff, but is sent away with a flea in her ear by two staff who seem to think her presence is an insult, cracks me up. I assume we’re supposed to think she reeks of homelessness or is too scruffy or old or something, but given that GA looks effortlessly like an off-duty film star and is dressed in boho chic with a nice, woven cross-body bag, and looks way more put together than the staff we see, it makes no sense.

But interesting that the screenplay writers felt the need to insert a scene to show that RW did try to find work before the fleece-packing job, otherwise she looks as if she, as much as Polly, is exploiting a struggling, seriously ill man, who is suffering while working to keep a roof over their heads.

I was hoping someone who’d met them would give us some first hand insights. Interesting. Did he look unwell or frail?

I’d forgotten that scene in the film. I thought it was ridiculously out of character for anybody to be that rude and unkind. If she’d wandered into a Chanel boutique in London after a night of sleeping rough, even then I can’t imagine her being given anything but sympathy.

Well she's much bolshier about it in TSP than she is in TWS:

I looked for work, but in such a rural area there was nothing that paid more than enough to cover the petrol costs to get to the job. And who wants a fifty-year-old woman whose work history for the last twenty years has been self-employment? It didn’t count that I’d been a farmer, plumber, builder, electrician, gardener, decorator, designer, accountant, tree surgeon, and run a holiday let. I had neither a piece of paper or an ex-employer to prove it. I would have to retrain.

This is obviously patently untrue, as we know that, certainly after they went to live in Wales they were only 'farmers' in the sense of having a two-acre smallholding with some sheep and hens so they could call their holiday let a 'farmstay', and that she had at least two jobs outside the home, book-keeping at the Abersoch hotel and at the Hemmingses.

(I mean, I can absolutely believe she had some basic skills in plumbing and electrics from renovating their place, but no one is going to want to hire someone with no actual qualifications in these areas! And anyone with a garden and a house is going to have done some pruning of trees, decorating and gardening. I did like the inside of their house on Escape to the Country, though I'm not sure what 'piece of paper' she thinks would make her employable at any of these things...?)

The reason, of course, that she has to claim a blank CV, 20 years of self-employment, and no ex-employers to give her a reference, is Martin Hemmings.

But yes, I agree that she's appropriating prejudice against middle-aged women with spotty or dated CVs due to caring responsibilities to make the fake past she's invented to cover up her criminality more 'relatable'.

Actually, based on some of my experiences of going into high-end shops in London, dead-eyed from fatigue and with baby DS drooling in his baby carrier, I can imagine a rough sleeper not getting past the security on the door!

But for a low-rent looking cafe in (presumably) a small Midlands town (they're clearly not near any cities or big towns if fuel costs would eat up her pay), it was played ridiculously like that Pretty Woman scene where the icequeen Rodeo Drive boutique assistants are big old meanies to Julia Roberts.

Ha! It’s like that ‘I’m not just a mum, I’m a chef, nurse, chauffeur, peace negotiator’ bollocks that you used to see spouted.

I do my own gardening, decorate my house and do basic electrics and plumbing. As well as having a full time job. Big wow.

Sal obviously wouldn’t have had to retrain to stack shelves, do cleaning or care work. And absolute bollocks that she wouldn’t have work near enough to make a profit after petrol. Even on minimum wage it would have been worth her while working. But obviously it’s tricky to show a cv and references when you stole 67k from your most recent employer!

I mean I live rurally. I have to drive to work. And it's NMW. But if you work enough hours, Sally, it more than covers the petrol costs....

I had neither a piece of paper or an ex-employer to prove it. I would have to retrain.

This is a real slip up on her part, considering we now know of 2 ex employers. OK, Martin Hemmings was dead by this point even without the reasons why she wouldn't ask for a reference there, but what about the hotel in Abersoch?

Also, didn't she go to college? I don't know if it's ever been established what she was studying when she met Mothtim or if she completd her course. It would be a very old qualification but it would be something.

Agree she has used the well known difficulties facing older women reentering the workplace to justify her lack of motivation around paid employment.

Attached is one of the few interviews where Moth talks about his relationship with SW. Interestingly he says:

"I don't remember much about the week when our home was taken away and I was diagnosed with CBD".

This suggests to me that either a) he is indeed losing his memory or b) he is simply not a great liar because the events described in TSP don't correspond with what actually happened!

Raynor Winn and her terminally ill husband on the joy of wild walking

There's a third alternative - that he's been TOLD to say this. That way SW doesn't have to do a 'clean up' on what her husband has said. Stick to the party line, Tim, that way you can't slip up.

And surely SW must have some qualifications? She didn't walk into the job with the Hemings as a book keeper with just an O level in Maths, surely?

TW: I love Raynor, body and soul. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for her.

The latest hospital letter (2025) was from the cognitive function clinic. I've postulated before that TW may have memory/cognitive decline which necessitates him being kept away from journalists.

It's almost as though she needs a bookkeeper to point this out to her. 😀

I would have thought that TW having cognitive decline would make SW MORE likely to wheel him out at interviews. "See, he gets confused, he's unwell! I'd better take him on another long distance walk!"

I have to say that it has occurred to me (in close contact with a relative on DH's side whose dementia-caused disinhibition means he frequently blurts out remarks like 'I've never liked her' and 'You're an awful bitch' and talks in often mind-boggling and uncensored detail about the past as though it's just happened) to wonder what precise form the cognitive decline associated with TW's possible condition might take, and whether it might have endangered the cover story before CH's investigation was published.

I mean, I'm not being gleeful about this. Cognitive decline in your significant other is awful, and it would be a very dark situation indeed, added to that, for the only other person who knows the truth to suddenly become the major threat to the illusion.

Yes thanks, we have discussed this at a couple of points in the mists of time, just don't ask me which threads!

How Not to Dal dy Dir, and images of, also appears on a few other websites, such as Goodreads, Amazon, Waterstones, eBay, Accidental Smallholder and the WalkerWinnWyns' archived Gangani Publishing. It seems to be Sally or one of them in various guises touting and sometimes positively reviewing it.

We have also seen that Chloe H has unsurprisingly been trying to get hold of a copy for some months, since before her exposé first went to print.

Not if he says 'Remember when you stole all that money and blew it on a powder-blue Aga and nice holidays, Sal?' on live tv...

I guess if one has been used to an extra grand a month on top of your legitimate pay cheque, it’s a bit of a come-down to just take home your actual honest earnings!

Well yes, if he DOES have cognitive decline, (and I'm not saying he does of course, but the letter was from the relevant clinic) - he might well be prone to unpredictable outbursts, or an inability to lie convincingly. And that could fluctuate (whilst gradually following a worsening trajectory), so any day might be a good one, or a bad one. A nightmare if you need someone to stay on-message!