Thread 19: 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 ...

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?

Thread 18: https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5422393-thread-18-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. Over four months we have done amazingly well together for 18 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.

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

"I'll fight anyone who says I'll make it to Christmas 2021!"

There has been a fair amount of debate about whether RW has ever explicitly told anybody that the doctors only gave Moth a short time to live. Well in the Independent article from 2018 below, the answer is a categorical yes:

In the days following the shock judgement, Moth was given bad news; he was suffering from corticobasal degeneration, or CBD. It was an illness that was going to drastically limit his life. “In fact,” says Winn, “we were told that he probably wouldn’t last two years.”

The Salt Path: One woman's journey walking the entire South West Coast Path after becoming homeless | The Independent | The Independent

RW is definitely onto something about this nature lark. Attached are comments made to the Guardian in 2018: So profound.

“The wind affects the water, and the clouds … it’s like one big whole, and after being in it for a while I knew I was part of that big circular movement of molecules.”

“The wind affects the water, and the clouds … it’s like one big whole, and after being in it for a while I knew I was part of that big circular movement of molecules.”

It’s so sad that it took over half of a century of your life and of being homeless, with your husband on the brink of death before this realisation hit you Raynor Winn. I expect you were closeted in a council house up until then, with a mundane job at the supermarket.

Agreed. But this is the story she has continuously told as we’ve seen from various quotes in her books. Whether the doctors actually said it or not is ambiguous (probably didn’t) but she definitely took that ball and ran with it.

Many threads ago, someone did an incredible job of putting together a timeline. The last iteration was posted by@disappointedreader but I'm afraid I don't remember whether they were the original compiler - profuse apologies for that.

The last few posts have raised apparent inconsistencies about many parts of TSP's "true story" (as Penguin still call it), such as the selling of mother's wedding dress, SAW and TW's wedding, dates of falling through one or more roofs, what doctors allegedly said and when.

I was wondeting whether those are reflected in the timeline or whether these are additiional inconsistencies.

I really hate the way that in her rebuttal she totally spins this to claim that she’s only ever referring to Moth and charting what worked for him. What cobblers! In the very same rebuttal she accused the Observer article of having snatched “beacons of hope” from people. Which is it Sally??
Personally I think her scrutinising of the Daily Mail infomercials was leading to a belief that she could win a Nobel prize.

The way the world is going, the idea of SW winning a Nobel prize does not seem as far-fetched as it should be.

The timeline in its current state is at the beginning of thread 17, but I haven’t checked to see if answers to your questions are there.

Which is clearly untrue given her general theory of restorative nature. Or does nature's power only work for Moth? She also never ever suggested his CBD was indolent as she claims in her letter. I think the only time I can recall anything close to that is when she wrote the Dr said Moth likely has a slow progressing form because he's had symptoms for so long. But thereafter it's all about his decline and impending death.

She also shifts key considerably when the carefree ‘housed but working daily in wild nature’ shtick apparently doesn’t work for TW on the cider farm.

Perhaps understandable that anyone’s health might take a bit of a hit when doing their Finals and commuting fairly long distances to university, but the cider farm life was perfect for TW, surely — a roof over their heads, a secure tenancy somewhere beautiful, an income from TSP, no pressure, meaningful daily active work on the land.

SW rhapsodises in TWS He needed air, and wind, wild skies and purpose. He needed to spend his days moving in green spaces. He needed the natural world to wrap him in the green cloak of belonging and help him back to the strength he’d found on the path.

and

He needed a wild, green life, but not stress, or complexity or problems. Just the simplicity of a life in nature.

I mean, don’t we all? I’d love a life without stress and complexity or problems. But that seems to be exactly what TW gets — no money troubles, adult children off doing their own thing, a meaningful job working in the outdoors, a home, a wife happily engaged in promoting her bestseller and writing another.

Yet it appears not to ‘work’. Nature’s power appears to fail Moth. He needs to be taken on more long walks.

I wonder if she's using Long Covid as an excuse for why she's not appearing in public to stand up and refute all those nasty and untrue charges made against her.

It's far more convenient to say 'I was unable to walk more than a few metres, I was tired and largely bedbound, struggling daily to complete even the most mundane tasks' than 'I was advised by my agent and solicitor to sit down and shut up and hope it all blew over.'

Yes, the " we're rewilding Moth" quote when at Bill Cole's farm. Maybe she realised that she needed her 'formula' to write and no walkies, no bookies.

He needed a wild, green life, but not stress, or complexity or problems. Just the simplicity of a life in nature.

Honestly, she makes him sound like Tarzan.

You must be feeling better @Uricon2, your humour is spot on, Tarzan Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-ah!, like Tarzan Tim doesn't say a lot either, Jane (Salray) does the talking.

Tsrzsn hsd some run-ins with nature. Does anyone remember the giant clam trapping his foot while he was swimming? That would never happen to Moth: he is more in tune with nature, and maybe also a better swimmer.

😀😀

I love ‘No walkies, no bookies’. And I suspect you’re right.

She admitted to struggling with TWS, a weird, bitty book that doesn’t really have a focus. It seems very likely to me that her editor read a draft and said ‘Look, there’s none of the magic of TSP, no redemptive arc’, and SW thought she’d stick in a walk they’d done some time earlier and add a bit of jeopardy by having Dave and Julie be horrified by Moth’s fragility, despite this apparently being after months of being ‘rewilded’ on the cider farm.

So we now have the ‘can he or can’t he’ in Iceland, the teeth in the Mars bar, the ‘will they or won’t they get to the end of the walk before the buses stop?’, only it’s still a bit of a dud (as I imagine her editor thought) in part because it’s just an expensive holiday, partly because the ‘nature’ in Iceland is certainly ‘wild’, but it’s not inviting, green and healing, it’s a hostile volcanic landscape of rock and ice.

He would disarm the giant clam by reciting chunks of Beowulf, clearly.

While it's quiet and hopefully no scolders are about, I must say how much all the ideas for spoofing TSP made me laugh. I can't remember who said what now, but a comic strip presents version of TSP would be great. I think Jennifer Saunders would be brilliant for nearly all the female roles, I think she could play Salray perfectly. Dawn French could play Moth, French and Saunders had quite a few male characters in their repotoir, I can see Dawn in Tim's trademark outfits :)
He probably would be a better swimmer @Peladon I expect he would have on a natty knitted bathing costume :)

partly because the ‘nature’ in Iceland is certainly ‘wild’, but it’s not inviting, green and healing, it’s a hostile volcanic landscape of rock and ice.

Yes, more difficult to skip around 'communing' like a female Basil Fotherington -Tomas in "hullo clouds, hullo sky" mode (I can really imagine Dawn F doing that in the spoof, interspersed with moments of snarling, incongruous rage when anyone erm looks at them)

😀
You’re on cracking form today, @Uricon2 — how’s the blood pressure? I certainly hope it suggests you’re feeling better.

They'd be absolutely brilliant. There’d be roles for Celia Imrie, Julie Walters and Joanna Lumley too!

There is a “get out clause” regarding the cider farm. I agree, it sounds bloody perfect for them there but reality and the book never quite match up, so in the book she writes a conversation between herself and Moth in which they discuss sadly that they mustn’t become attached, because it doesn’t belong to them.

😄 you’ve got it to a “T”!

Got to have a scene where one of them is clinging onto a precipice by the fingernails, dramatic music, shaking camera work, close ups, jeopardy, wind blowing and sea roaring. They slip and fall…. Landing a few inches onto a grassy ledge.

Thank you and also @Freshsocks ! I'm OK but averaging 4 hours sleep a night at present. I think it's making me (even) less tolerant of Nature Boy and Girl.

That’s awful, so sorry to hear that @Uricon2
Hopefully laughing will be good medicine?

The thing is, though, that the whole crux of them 'not getting attached' in that conversation is that the cider farm doesn't belong to them, they're just tenants.

But by then TSP had sold well enough that they could have become cash buyers of any number of properties with or without land -- entire farms to rewild if they wanted them. No mortgage, no possibility of anyone taking it from them, the ability to own a slice of landscape they can farm and/or rewild, and spend all their time on, camping out at night if that's what floats their boat.

Only they mysteriously don't. (Or if they do, it's an investment property they don't live on, and haven't mentioned anywhere...)

And immediately after they have this conversation about not getting attached and the insecurity of their tenure, Bill Cole shows up and weeps hysterically with gratitude for all their work, showing them they're secure there. That night, looking out at the August full moon, they talk about how lovely it would be in a tent on a night like that, so warm and still -- so where do they go? A UK LD path where they can enjoy the green landscape and warm August weather? Nope. Iceland, where they will be walking just below the Arctic circle in desolate volcanic mountains, where winter is already starting, and where the cold immediately turns the miraculously improving Moth back to hobbling and pain. (But apparently it was all his idea.)

If someone handed it up to a tutor during a creative writing course, they'd be told 'Your characters' motivation is unclear.)