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.

Forgot to mention page 1, sentence 1 of the Prologue annoyed me

There's a sound to breaking waves when they're close, a sound like nothing else

Yes Salray, most of us know what breaking waves sound like and it's not an erupting volcano or the number 47 bus. It isn't helped by the fact that I can hear her portentous Gigspanner voice saying it in my head.

I don't think there is any real danger that I'm going to say that she's a fabulous writer, they're an adorable couple and you're all a load of big meanies, somehow.

Thanks. I understand where you're coming from. When I have commented on the Bill Cole interview, I always put 'gaslit' in inverted commas. I feel it is another appropriation of insidious behaviour .... but we just don't have a word for the more widespread extension of this.

I have to say that I see the conceit, and deceit, of both the Walkers displayed. This is what intrigues me ... a couple like it? I have known individuals who have shown various forms of these behaviours .. but both?

The Grant episode, and the subsequent musings, do convince me that they are both like it. Deceit and conceit. Two each.

@BeguiledBrandy interesting thoughts from you and @DoubtfulCat . It's not a folie a deux of course but there seem to be characteristics in both of them that reinforce the worst elements of the other. I can believe that Salray was trying to keep Timoth in the style that he (and she) thought he was entitled to but amongst the gushing declarations of Endless Love there seem to be moments of real resentment (I'm thinking about the bit prior to the Grant episode) towards him and I wonder if that anger is usually directed at judges/ "Cooper"/everyone else in the entire world because it's safer.

Excuse musings, I've just reached The Death of Smotyn and am overcome with raw emotion.

PS Not really.

The Death of Smotyn. That sounds like something out of an Anglo-Saxon epic poem, written shortly after the Battle of Maldon. Hang on a smo....

I should have stuck an introductory "Hwaet!" in there, shouldn't I?

I’m certain that it was Ray’s line, spoken by Gillian Anderson in the film which admitted he was Moth, not Simon… before the scene just folded in on itself and then petered out.
Edit: so many times during this film I was dismayed by the editing and direction.

"Hwaet! the death of heroes is upon us
Smotyn has yielded
A sheep of 19 summers
Rests in the fields of Wales

And long and angry mourning
Echoes in the the mead hall of his friends
But not for long will this bitter sorrow go unavenged
Because they're fibbing fibbers who are being evicted".

Anon.

I thought the same thing @FishwivesSalute. In Walking Away … well, I found it to be a very immersive experience and a joy to read. He is incredibly observant and communicates so well. He did struggle sometimes to keep looking where he was going, which is imperative on some of the terrain, because he naturally wants to look up and around at everything in sight.

I thought they would have ended it before the "confession" and then would have seen Raymoth heading back to the path after being booted and debating whether they should had told him the truth after all, because lasagne etc. I mean, it bears no relationship to the book anyway so could have been used for comedy value (I'm going to have to watch the film too, clearly!)

Fantastic!

I don’t want to give them any more money but I would like to see it again, just because it’s so crap. It’ll probably be a cult movie in years to come, like Nuts in May or Withnail and I.

I think there is a mix of the geography graduate and a poets eye, perhaps. Agree with you and @FishwivesSalute that his writing about his surroundings on the walk is absorbing.

Unlike another volume that I am sorely tempted to add margin notes to which would 3 chapters in consist of "Pile on the agony why don't you, a court case, a repossession, a terrible diagnosis and a dead flipping sheep by page 19".

Interesting topic - cult movies that were over hyped. Never took to Withnail and I. Suspect The Salt Path dies a quick death. On the other hand, anybody here liked 'Kes, A Kestrel for a Knave'? One of my favs.

Sorry, 2 chapters in. It feels very manipulative.

I remember reading Kes and watching the film when I was a child, but not since. It’s one I’ve always meant to go back to!

I remember being fascinated as to why the boy on the poster was making a rude sign .... I never got to see it

Exactly, yes. I think we should do an annotated version of TSP. The lies, so many lies.

Yes, absolutely. Wonderful book, wonderful film.

Ken Loach is one of my favourite directors.

Barry Hines tutored my ex at uni. I met him a couple of times at departmental "dos".

Agree. I do wonder what his version of TSP film would have been like! Before or after the expose. Preferably after.

Oooh yes… that’s got me thinking. The reality all the way up to the deception.

Ken Loach is still available....

I have a "working Bible" from my theology degree. Damned if I can make sense of a thing I wrote in the margins but it is quite precious decades later. I don't think there are many underlinings followed by "This is an absolute lie" "Really?" or "please learn how to write", though, which I think might plentifully besprinkle TSP.

Kes

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