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.

But you’re allowed to criticise SA! He’s a decent poet and quite nice the only time I’ve ever run across him, but also a grumpy middle-aged Eeyore who has had to treat his career as a poet with a financially canny eye — very rare to be able to make a living out of it. I imagine if he’s skimmed any of TSP or its sequels, his main emotion will have been ‘This sold outsold my walk books? Harrumph!’

ETA Sorry, had forgotten to make my point, which was that I don’t think that being namechecked in a popular memoir would have done much for SA.

I agree with everything you’ve said. It’s the part of her rebuttal where she addresses Moth’s health that I am most concerned about. Incidentally, I think this has been edited since first published. I’m naively expecting her to stop romanticising his illness. When she is using books as a way to communicate these very serious conditions, they become loaded with subjectivity because the very nature of her books is as though they are outpourings straight from her heart. This is where it gets so muddled for me because she is not an honest person, hence the two very different women and the books become fiction. Now is the time to untangle her husband from this nasty mess and clear things up properly, not in book form or carefully scripted nonsense that adheres to the Raynor Winn brand, but as Sally Walker, speaking on behalf of Tim if he is incapable of dealing with it himself. People continued to buy her books because they cared. I’m sorry, I don’t relate to some of the accusations that TSP readers who enjoyed the book are armchair travelling Guardian readers who “feel good” while reading of other people’s hardships because I am not of that stereotype. I didn’t read these books for any reason other than I believed her and wanted to wish them well. You can forgive clunky writing when it is supposedly somebody’s unexpected first novel that was only supposed to be a gift for their husband, can you not? But this is not the case, we now know. It was carefully crafted and very manipulative as well as exploitative. In her rebuttal she says:

“As I’ve explained many times in my books, we will always be grateful that Moth’s version of CBS is indolent, its slow progression (P15 The Salt Path) has allowed us time to discover how walking helps him. Others aren’t so lucky.
The effect of the suggestion that Moth has made up this condition has been absolutely traumatising for him. Suggestions made by people, who do not know him, have never met him, and have never seen his medical records. But even worse, is the effect on those sufferers who have looked to Moth as a beacon of hope. The hope that, maybe not now, maybe not for them, but at some point in the future, we might find some answers to this condition that has no treatment, and no cure.”

Others aren’t so lucky.

It’s now time to just say that his health isn’t as bad as they thought and then disappear without any more bloody books being published, just FO. We know she’s a thief and a liar and the pair of them seem to be co dependent. I personally don’t care why she stole money, only that she did. Her actions have had a huge impact on the people she fooled. That counts for something.

“The effect of the suggestion that Moth has made up this condition has been absolutely traumatising for him. Suggestions made by people, who do not know him, have never met him, and have never seen his medical records.”
The accusation, if that isn’t too strong a word, is not that he has “made up” his condition but that from the evidence presented in her books* and by the doctors, it does not appear to warrant the hysterical treatment of her first person narrative in the books or the lies told to Bill Cole.
*It is contradictory. He managed to achieve rather a lot while being quite malnourished and in the condition stated. His achievements have been astounding and even stated as being due to the conditions faced when LDW.

Yes, and don’t forget the dog that knocks her flying so that she drops their last few coins and is accused of being a drunk tramp as she grovels in the gutter, and the dog who runs amok in their tent, and the different dog who urinates on their tent with the encouragement of its owner.

SW definitely likes a ‘uncontrolled dog showing the general awfulness of their owner’ anecdote. Not that badly-behaved dogs aren’t a nuisance, obviously, but in TSP they’re just adding to the ‘Isn’t everyone ghastly, apart from us and a couple of fellow under-dogs and free spirits?’ pose.

And don't forget Buster the unruly dalmatian with the rude Liverpudlian at Gillan Creek. Dogs are a bit like some sort of augury of misfortune. Cue stage left unruly dog which appears in scene which underlines the abject plight of Raymoth's homelessness.

I couldn’t agree more with everybody’s posts here today ❤️ All of your conclusions and opinions about the scenes written and quoted are absolutely correct.

I read a lovely bit from when SA became poet laureate and rang his parents, who were so proud of him and were crying, he said his dad's sense of humour drove him to say, "if your grandad were alive, the news would have killed him"

I forgot him!

And yes to canine bad augury! 😀

Until they adopt adorable Monty, the runt of the litter with something wrong with his legs, in an act of benevolence which both cleverly shows their deep goodness, and their affinity with the literal underdog. Not for them the Crufts-winning pedigree canine etc etc.

(Though, cynically, I have wondered whether Monty having something wrong with his legs that makes him unable to walk long distances was a convenient explanation as to why they didn’t take him with them on what was supposed to have been a dog-friendly, wild camping walk on Cape Wrath, at a very slow pace, because Moth can barely walk. Of course, given that they’d clearly always planned a much longer walk which involved taxis, bikes and hotel stays, they couldn’t have brought a dog, but the official narrative of LL is that this all came as a big surprise, so them leaving their dog at home when going on a supposedly dog-friendly trip looked slightly odd…?)

I had the same thought re: Monty.

At the start of this thread, I thought- and others thought- it would tail off around page 8 or 9. And yet, here we are at page 39 and poor @DisappointedReader probably thought she would be able to avoid creating a new one…

Hope the cider and fudge rations will last!

I suppose what I have really wondered about regarding SA is did he read TSP and the references to himself? or would Salrays people have contacted SA's publisher. Was he given a brief outline of the plot and circumstances of the couple, I just can't see him sitting down and reading the book, he must have taken direction from his publisher and were they relying on Penguin for the veracity of the book? I would not have thought they would direct him to do anything detrimental to his career, I realise that by the time the film was being made he was not happy to be portrayed inaccurately, having to point out that he was real.

I feel a bit sorry for the guy, I read one review of TSP by a respected author who found that SA's book about his walk seemed contrived, compared to the honesty of Salrays TSP, very depressing that so many people have been hoodwinked. I am not surprised that Salray has attacked the character of dogs as well as people. what kind of personality disorder does Salray have? the blaming everyone else, mocking people, making others the butt of jokes. It's always somebody else, the entitlement, I know these are narcissistic traits along with not admitting to being in the wrong.

I agree @DoubtfulCat poor @DisappointedReader let's keep our fingers crossed that stocks hold up!

In the immortal words (nearly) of Mandy Rice-Davis... 'well, she would say that, wouldn't she?'

Well, you talkative lot. It looks like I'd better start limbering up. Someone better send the St Bernard, with cider and fudge instead of brandy.

😀

(I think Rhys Ifans was in Notting Hill, though, as Hugh Grant’s pervy lodger who kept prancing around in greying y-fronts…)

@Freshsocks, I think someone from PRH would have sent SA the extracts in which his name appeared and probably a blurb and some context (debut author, non-fiction, homelessness, terminal diagnosis, SWCP etc), and then, when the film was going into production, someone would have done the same with the script extracts.

Can anyone with a better memory than me remember whether the film script did honour his injunction to not be referred to anachronistically as the PL? I remember SA being referenced in the film when ‘Moth’ is struggling with a stile where a young couple start talking to them, and the ‘Grant’ episode, but not whether anyone calls him the PL.

I skim read this and thought it was a hilarious skit, the following post explaining it’s an actual extract made me exclaim out loud! Dear goodness, what dross!

Sorry, @DisappointedReader, I take some responsibility for the revival. I’m sick in bed and unable to talk because of a nasty cough (I’m writing notes to my teenager: ‘YOUR SOCKS HAVE BEEN ON THE FLOOR SINCE TUESDAY’) and it’s making me acerbic and more liable to post.

I read it and thought of my editor's fact if I'd turned in something like this... I mean, I'm no Simon Armitage, but I can write dialogue better than this! Somebody with a red pen should have given it a bit of a tweak before it went into the book (or, even worse thought, maybe this is the best she could do after an edit...)

Unless anyone has any strong objections, I'm going to simplify the start of Thread 18, referring people back to the opening post and first posts of this thread (17) for most of the links, the timelines and so on. At this stage of proceedings, I don't think we need to keep repeating them at the beginning of every new thread, however many new threads that may be. <head in hands>

Thank you @Pissenlit I didn't think SA would have read it, I forgot that you are poorly, hope you feel better soon, you have certainly cheered me up with your notes to teenagers :)

Yes @Pissenlit , mistakes were made.

Your post did make me laugh though. We've all been there. Maybe you could publish a book from your sick bed of your notes to teens and raffle off your house? Or collaborate with a folk band, base the lyrics on the notes and use your sick bed as an art installation? Get well soon. = dandelion

PS If a shifty couple offer to run your raffle or a woman joins you on stage in a lab coat, make yourself scarce.

Great work (as usual!). Looking forward to Thread 18!

In the meantime thought I would post a link to an article I came across recently in the Gulf Times in which SW gives an exclusive interview with the journalist.

For those that claim that she always sticks to the same script, well she sometimes doesn't. In the interview she claims that the neurologist gave Moth just 2 months to live!

Evicted from their house, this couple walked 630 miles — and found home

I feel a bit sorry for the guy, I read one review of TSP by a respected author who found that SA's book about his walk seemed contrived, compared to the honesty of Salrays TSP, very depressing that so many people have been hoodwinked.

@Freshsocks I loved both Simon's walking books. People can obviously prefer something else, though in this case the comparison made certainly hasn't aged well. I think some people who obviously believed the (sob) story behind TSP, through no fault of their own,might have overlooked the quality of the writing or lack of it.

I'm only guessing obviously but I wouldn't be surprised if SA wasn't now a bit pissed off by the World of Raymoth. His Blossomise, illustrated by Angela H came out last year but the meeting with her recorded on his Insta is post scandal. I did wonder if it was a bit of a public show of support, considering he too has been dragged into the whole thing.

@DisappointedReader thank you. We are passing around a clean sock to start a pension fund for you payable when/if these threads end.

What a dreadful review that must have been! The two books read simultaneously or in tandem, clearly show that the opposite is true, even without knowing the back story of the Winns.
I know what you mean about feeling a bit sorry for SA. I do too because he didn’t deserve this. He’s been unwittingly caught up in their stupidity and especially now I imagine it feels like having stepped in something nasty. However, he is on a completely different level to them in every way and thankfully unaffected. I don’t recall his name in the film being linked with poet laureate, but I only watched it once.

This thread is now showing me adverts for socks! 😀

😂we need the cider and fudge suppliers too!