Thread 17: 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)
Links to more Observer videos can be found in an early post of this new thread and here: Observer YouTube Channel: The Observer UK - YouTube
Working timeline and references: can be found in early posts of this new Thread 17.
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?
Threads 13-14: Links in the OP of Thread 15
Thread 15:Thread 15: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
Thread 16: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5395002-thread-16-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 are welcome. It would be helpful to get the background from at least some of the Observer items above before posting.
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 sixteen 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 17. I'm as in need of smelling salts as the next person.

We seek them here, we seek them there, mumsnetters seek them everywhere: just where are the elusive How not to Dal dy Dir and On Winter Hill?

#handwavium #appropriation

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

Surely, if Our Simon did indeed turn up in the wake of RayMoth, the astonished bakers of the SWCP would have asked him who the heck he thought he was, turning up pretending to be SA when 'the real SA' had already passed through with his good lady wife/assistant and been fed?

But surely those bakers, having surrendered their goodies to the stomachs of the Assumed Simon, would have gone home again, satisfied by a poet well fed. Then the next tranche would have come out of their houses, and these would have been lucky enough to bag themselves a real poet.

Actually, the more we talk about this, the more loopy people rushing out of their pathside houses (are there even that many?) where they have been lying in anxious wait seems. NotOurSimon seems to have attracted much more impromptu attention than Our Simon did.

I use the word "seems" advisedly.

I’ve read Walking Away, and I don’t remember anyone at all coming out of their houses to offer SA cakes…? I remember the couple who beachcomb and whose house some rude hikers mistake for a cafe inviting him in for tea in the garden, and I remember some reference to eating an entire lemon drizzle cake, but I assume that was either brought by a fellow-walker or an unusually copious lunch from a night’s host?

Or was this in an interview or something?

"Who does he think he is? Simon Armitage?" said Janice with indignant froth.

I am going to refer to eating a large cake in a single sitting as 'doing a Simon' from here on in. And bearing in mind it happens rather often in this house, I can see this gaining currency.

😂@Vroomfondleswaistcoat my younger brother is tall (6' 6") grew incredibly quickly and was renowned in his locust like and very sporty teens for eating everything in sight, eg a whole packet of biscuits leaning on the mantelpiece while having a chat. More than one cake disappeared before cooling fully. If any of the rest of us had done it, the consequences would have been dire but he was a "growing boy" (and admittedly had a winning charm not evident in his more combatative sister)

He shares his name with a certain well known poet, oddly enough.

SW seems to have a fundamental inability to describe any event that occurs to her, accurately. Whether its being rowed across the Gillan Creek or meeting a couple of friendly Aussies in a cafe, her perspective of reality is just plain warped - or maybe this is how pathological liars behave, always distorting the truth in order to garner more attention and, in the case of TSP, make the book more entertaining and marketable.

I live alone <shame>.

Look, I just really really like cake, all right? I'm a Simon, I admit it! Simon, out and proud!

@SimoArmo I think she spoke these words in one of the video q&as as well...it's as if we can track how she continually embellishes stories over time.

Yes. This all sums it up. I remember someone asking before re: the interviews, Q&As, how that relates to the required promotion for Penguin. She measurably goes further, with the encouragement of enthusiastic interviewers, I have noticed.

I have given the example of the exaggeration over the SWCP walk - which she says she will do the missing bits one day (as with the OWH article) in earlier interviews. Later it is always stressing that they did the whole walk/elevation of Everest spiel.

😂(whispers...I don't like cake....but cheese...cheese..my excuse (current) is that I need the protein to recover, but don't really need one)

We now know that if SA does walk past Chateau Vroom he won't be getting so much as a crumb. It will be like the SWCP all over again.

@Catwith69lives Agree. I think it is a characteristic of pathological lying that it is done when noone else would think it necessary. She turned eg a nice chat with the Parsons into another excuse for "poor meing" when there was no need. I hesitate to say the word because it is indeed overused but is actually very narcissistic behaviour.

'Publicity' for SA's 2013 west country tour!

From what I've seen and reading the book, it was quite low key and certainly wouldn't have brought out cheering crowds demonstrating their baking abilities!

My brother was the same.
I remember a low point when I'd just came back from uni, and dm bought a packet of 6 donuts. He was furious because now I was back, I would expect one, so instead of him getting 4.5 donuts to eat in one go, he'd "only" get 3.5 <poor little thing> Dm went out to buy him another packet to placate him, so he got 9.5 instead, in fact I've half a feeling dm didn't have her normal half either so probably 10.
The really galling thing for me was that before I went to uni, shop bought cakes were a rarity and always divided up. If Dm had bought donuts, we'd have been having maximum 1/2 each. To find that he was being bought 4.5 donuts every week was a real slap in the face.
He doesn't even have the excuse he shares his name with a poet.

No mention in this article of SA being regaled with free cakes and ale en route!

Walking with Simon Armitage – Cole Moreton

Thank you for that publicity poster. It proves that anyone expecting SA - would not believe Tim Walker was him.

TSP - Combe Martin .... we tried the tourist information office hoping they’d point us in the right direction. Inside three old ladies were lined up behind the counter; they looked up at us, whispering, smiling and nodding.

‘Moth, you speak to them, you always have a way with old ladies.’

‘That sounds really dodgy.’

We dropped our packs by the door.

‘Ladies, I wonder if you can help us. We’ve been looking for a cash machine, but it seems we’re out of luck. Could you possibly direct us?’

The ladies shuffled, nudging each other, giggling.
‘Of course, it’s a pleasure to help. Just go to the grocery store up to the left. They’ll do cashback for you, Mr Armitage, but they weren’t expecting you yet.’

‘Sorry, I’m not Mr Armitage.’

The ladies looked at each other conspiratorially.
‘No of course not, that’s okay, our secret, we won’t say a word.’

Maybe they saw the poster at Combe Martin (above) and that's where they got the idea for the SA gag.

And here he looks very obviously unlike TW. Only a sentient bar a fudge could mistake one for the other, and even then the chances would still be low.

I think SA could only dream of such fame especially prior to becoming PL.

It's all a bit niche, poetry and as I've said before , anyone who knew about his walk would have a vague idea what he looked like at least.

While on the subject- Sue Armitage. I've seen a photo of her and she looks less like Salray than Simon does like Timmoth, if that's possible. Not posting it as she's a private not public person. She did join SA for a couple of bits of the walk, once when his friend Seamus Heaney died and then lay in wait for him on the path as a surprise later on.

I'm assuming that the poetry loving, path adjacent, baking hordes of Cornwall assumed Salray was Mrs A or Mrs A adjacent. It's boggling, really, how bold that book is in its claims.

If they have ever been there!

Yes, that's possible and of course Walking Away was published 3 years before TSP. In a review of Walking Away - I noted:

Much of the account has the immediacy of notes taken down at the time – the crisp observations, the oscillating barometer of his spirits.

There is something in SA's writing that makes me not doubt what he is saying. He's struggling at points, bloody hates the goats at Combe Martin, thanks at the end a multitude of people who either hosted him or he met quite randomly and wouldn't know they are being thanked probably.

I know his books sold well, but I somehow quite resent that the deceptive whingfest that was TSP probably sold better. I suppose standing the test of time is a compensation.

If they have ever been there!

I should explain my scepticism - remember I'm a local - so I easily say these things. The Great Hangman, at Combe Martin, is the highest sea cliff in England. It is very hard walking along that stretch!

England's highest sea cliff Great Hangman is a 'monstrous climb' - BBC News

Shocking piece of dialogue writing there from Our Sal.

Dialogue is whatever the opposite of a forte is for SW.

SA was due to give his poetry readings in Combe Martin on Sat 31 Aug. If the Walkers did set off from Minehead around the 8th Aug, they would have reached Combe Martin around 15 Aug. The 3 women who mistook TW for SA worked in the tourist office in Combe Martin! Why on earth would they have thought that SA had turned up in Combe Martin 2 weeks ahead of schedule?