Thread 18: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

Hello all. I've simplified the opening post as I don't think we need to keep reposting all the links, timelines and so on at this stage of proceedings.

The Observer's original exposé: The real Salt Path: how a blockbuster book and film were ...
First thread: To feel disappointed after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet
Links to threads 2-16, the other 20 Observer articles and videos to date, Raynor Winn/Sally Walker's statement, our timeline and sources can all be accessed in the OP and first few posts of Thread 17: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5403285-thread-17-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 exposé items 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 drive-by scolders 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 17 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.

Now three months in, if these threads could wear slogan t-shirts they would be Mark Twain's often misquoted 'The report of my death was an exaggeration'. Applications in writing from correspondents seeking supply parcels of fudge and cider will be tolerated.

Here we are again
Disappointed as can be
All good pals and jolly good company
Strolling round the path
Happy on a spree
All good pals and jolly good company

Never mind the weather, never mind the rain
Now that we're together, whoops we go again!
Whoops, we go again
La-di-da-di-da, la-di-da-di-dee
All good pals and jolly good company

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

Ah, I misremembered and you're quite right, it certainly does!

But even so, if I had been diagnosed with a degenerative condition that meant periods of being frail, I am not at all sure that I would want to be involving myself in any sport that had deep water as an element. Just the knowledge that I wasn't as strong as I could be and might find getting myself out of difficulties to be beyond my capability would put me off anything like surfing or body boarding. You can drown in very shallow water, after all.

You are so right.

I sometimes think of the last time I went bodyboarding at Fistral (Newquay). A young Asian man, in the water next to me, spoke to me as he was very amused that I had such a tatty board. He then went further out as I stayed put. Later, when I was resting on the beach, there was much interest in the helicopter landing. Unfortunately, when I looked up what had happened later, it was one of his party who had been rescued. This is about 15 years ago, they were a little group of Indonesian students ... he sadly drowned.

Oh that is sad @BeguiledBrandy and it shows that even fit young people can get into trouble very easily. I agree with you and @Vroomfondleswaistcoat that it seems like an odd thing for someone with that diagnosis/the issues he was experiencing to take up (but then, it is part of an extensive catalogue of odd things, as we know)

No, it was surfing

You didn't misremeber - son definitely posted "teaching my dad to surf". Daily Mail reported it and I saw the post before he changed his privacy settings.

He'd been diagnosed in the book in 2013 but not diagnosed in reality, as far as the evidence tells us, until 2015. So surfing took place 2 years before diagnosis...and he may or may not have had symptoms depending on what one chooses to believe.

Body boarding bonkers, surfing bonkerser then, in his case. Of all the things you can do that need very good balance it is high on the list and this is the man who had apparently been told to be careful on stairs.

The way I see the evidenced timeline:

2013
July Surfing Newquay
September Son picks them up from Land's End

2015
February Son helps them move

Later that year we get the medical letters, starting the uni course, meet the Parsons, move to Polruan

There is no evidence for anything else, as far as I can see?

Yes, it's the old 2013/2015 conundrum again isn't it?

As you say @Uricon2 it's that old chestnut, it is all very cut and dried in my mind, as @SimoArmo and @BeguiledBrandy say the timeline and diagnosis letter prove that in 2013 Moth was just a bloke with ailments that were being dealt with by the doctor and pain clinic. This is confirmed in the 2015 medical letter, Salray herself published. In 2013 Salray hadn't heard of CBD, remember she just thought he was worn out from plastering or falling through the barn roof. As @Vroomfondleswaistcoat points out Moth seems to have felt confident enough in his physical ability to cope in deep water.

Although if he takes after his mother "teaching my dad to surf" could have actually been "teaching my dad to body-board" or even "teaching my dad to take a paddle".😀

Or 'Letting my dad watch from the beach, having driven me and my friends to the coast, with a hot coffee and a bacon sarnie while I show off to my mates.'

Source - know quite a few surfers.

Since when has SW respected timelines or the truth for that matter.

I can actually think of a few ways this could work narratively - using OWH (original version) as a framing device. Lots of flashbacks, with explanatory monologuing interspersed with bleak natural history highlighting her current mental state and counterpointed with the continuing recovery of Moth, who then declines badly enough for her to point the Meanie Finger at the general public.

And, of course, she can justify all her actions in the book then promptly return to her Splendid Isolation, so that she's not around to answer all the "hang on a minute...." questions from the reading public. Because, of course, she needs peace and quiet to nurse Moth through his latest bout of whatever she's decided his current diagnosis is.

Because, of course, she needs peace and quiet to nurse Moth through his latest bout of whatever she's decided his current diagnosis is.

Oh this did make me laugh @Vroomfondleswaistcoat !

True though, isn't it, there is massive effort on these threads to try to separate truth from fiction and we get boggled at times with the Ever Changing Story. So much smoke, so many mirrors.

She should start a circus, high wire walking might be a nice change from surfing for Mothtim, on a good day, of course.

It was surfing.i saw somebody’s screen grab. My DH surfs so i was struck by it.

The surfing is rounded up in this article. Also, that other anomaly - when they were facing destitution they gave their son a generous gift, for Christmas 2012:

No mention of meeting their son in Newquay....just nine months earlier, on the brink of losing their house, his cash-strapped parents had given him a lavish gift.

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Thanks to this thread I now have a refrain of the Clash's "Charlie Don't Surf" going through my head, slightly amended to "Timoth Don't Surf" of course.

It'll be the oeuvre of the Beach Boys next. "Surfin' SWCP".

That gift is a particularly strange feature IMO. I mean, who would? Or...was the "gift" to make sure some money was elsewhere?

I see that this article has assumed that SW is the author of HNTDDD but doesn't at any point raise the subject of the Christopher Bland prize.

I wonder if they were just trying to keep assets away from a possible bankruptcy, which may have been illegal.

I thought i also read somewhere about two cars being stored away somewhere - possibly with TWs mother and father who lived nearby at the time.

I think a lot of people who read superficially about this whole thing are being taken in by SW's assertion that she was never prosecuted for theft, almost as if this means that she was not guilty of theft. They don't read on to the part where she paid off her accuser. She is also giving it the 'I paid it all back therefore there's no crime', which is blatently not true.

Quite. It is yet more obfuscation because had the Hemmings not accepted the restitution of their money (and I don't blame them for doing so) she would very probably have been charged and also very probably imprisoned. It wasn't a moment of madness but a sustained fraud over a period of years, when she was in a position of trust. People have gone to gaol for far less.