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!"

@HatStickBoots Their misery must trump your misery.

Even when you have been the victims of a natural disaster and the Walkers need a bootlace.

For me, this is a very upsetting scene (for historical reasons I can elaborate on) - we can all have a frosty encounter with another person, we can be misunderstood or just say the wrong thing. But how can an unsuspecting village be in the wrong and the Walkers in the right?

We got into Boscastle at five minutes to five, and nearly made it into an outdoor shop to buy a new bootlace, but the door shut before Moth’s foot could stop it. He knotted the broken lace together and walked up the street. This village is famous, or infamous, for the floods of 2004, which washed away shops, cars and people, leaving the village devastated. I had thought it would be a friendly, welcoming place, happy to be rebuilt and back in business. But instead it was shut, everyone rushing away to put sandbags out just in case.

I assume she doesn't understand the word infamous but, even allowing for that, how can the Walkers be worse off than a village that was the victim of flash floods?

The irony is that she attempts to laugh this calumny off several years later when she returns to Boscastle for an interview with a journalist or some sort of event. She has zero moral compass and imo deserves no respect or compassion in view of the way she has behaved.

Ooo but @BecalmedBrandy this poor village (that had endured so much) was not sufficiently grateful to be graced by the presence of Raymoth and had the temerity to shut their doors at closing time, instead of waiting outside like a load of Victorian tenants anticipating the passing of the Lord's carriage, eagerly hoping for the honour of selling him a bootlace.

She really is disgraceful. No insight, no empathy (except for themselves) every minor issue an imagined personal slight.

Well remembered. Yes she says the opposite to her audience:

I remember that day coming to Boscastle (on their original walk). It was raining, and the laces had broken on my boots. I can remember going into the outdoor shop and buying some red boot laces. So, some good memories of that bit

This above was one of my 'slice of the pie' examples. I said:
**
She blatantly lies in the Muddy Stilettos Cornwall meeting. But would I have said anything ... no.... because it was in aid of PSPA.

I read Wikipedia's entry on "pathological lying".and was interested in two comments:

Under "characteristics", it says that defining characteristics include stories which are presented in a way that portrays the liar favorably, by telling stories that present them as the hero or the victim.

Under "epidemiology", it says that forty percent of cases reported central nervous system abnormality such as epilepsy or abnormal EEG readings.

It really is beyond belief!

Yes, the audacity fits in with what @LetsBeSensible and @DreamyHiker were saying about the thrill of taking the lying further.

Coupled with the posts I shared with @HatStickBoots about being held to ransom. In the Boscastle meeting, by the PSPA representatives being there and the proceeds going to the charity.

How dare shop owners and retail staff close their shops at closing time! Did they not know that the esteemed Raynor Winn was in their midst and might need something?

And just about everyone I know knots and reknots their bootlaces and only buys new ones when the original has become too ridiculously short to be usable. It's a pain in the behind to unlace and relace walking boots so you make do until you literally can't.

Is she sure that they were experienced walkers?

My biggest question surrounds SW.

Is she a Machiavellian schemer who came up with the idea of TSP shortly after the fiasco of HNTDD and planned it carefully from house repossession in 2013 to publication in 2018 or did she just get lucky and was she nothing more than the clueless individual described in TSP who went off on a walk on the SWCP in the height of summer without packing a sunhat (and sold less than 20 copies of HNTDD through a crazy idea of raffling their house while targeting the book at a handful of smallholders in N Wales)?

I (formerly doubtful, formerly alert) think Sal still had most of the £9000 on her. Wasn’t it found to have gone missing just a day or so after she was meant to pay it in because it should have been needed to pay the wages? So maybe she hadn’t spent it yet!?

I actually thought this was the case. She was discovered very quickly, still had the money - no idea why she did the tearful 'had to sell mother's wedding dress' thing, because surely if she hadn't taken the money, she wouldn't have needed to sell anything...

What did she say to the Hemings on that occasion? Did she admit the theft or was it another 'mistakes in the business accounts' job?

Agreed @Vroomfondleswaistcoat Whatever she said it was suspicious enough to make them check everything. Maybe it was the selling the wedding dress line. After all, if the money was just resting in her account on its way to the business account, or if she’d had a headache the day ahead was meant to go to the bank and didn’t go, but planned to the next day, that wouldn’t have been stealing. Saying she didn’t have the money was either a confession or (and this was probably the intention) an argument that she hadn’t taken it but was such a kind person that she would go to any lengths to repay it despite being innocent… just like the £64000 she later repaid despite being innocent. Mistakes were made, after all.

PS was Vroomfondle a character in the Hitchhiker’s Guide or am I misremembering?

Yep, Vroomfondle is from H2G2! I think I've used most of the character names from that series at one point or another.

I am swaying towards the idea that she is a Machiavellian schemer. When I look at everything we’ve laid out here, she just seems to be the type. Everything she writes is “in character”. I think she may separate herself from the “character” in order to not suffer the guilt that you’d think she would be suffering from. On the contrary, she tries to make others feel guilty, as the rebuttal shows.
Even the imaginary doctor who she describes in TSP is someone not to be trusted with her beloved Moth. She manages to field the awkward question of “Why did you decide that an arduous walk such as TSWCP would be just the ticket for someone who has been told to be careful on the stairs?” The husband whom she enthused about to the reader and made very clear that their love is unique. Answer: because the doctor couldn’t be trusted. Cue twisting the narrative in the book to enforce that idea onto the reader. This is supposed to be real, it is sold as such, it’s not questioned because hey, it worked didn’t it??

Hemmings, who is in her mid-70s, assumed the situation was down to her husband’s “rubbish” ability at chasing bills.
Things hit a low point over Easter in 2008, when there was not enough money in the accounts to pay the staff’s wages. Luckily, a
customer then paid £600 in cash for a survey.
“Instead of putting it in the safe, he asked Sally to pay it into the bank so on Friday he could do the wages,” Hemmings said.
When Friday arrived, Martin went to the bank to check the balance and there was not enough. The £600 was nowhere to be seen. Martin asked the bank manager to go through his accounts and found that
more than £6,000 over several months had been written off in cheques with a signature aping his own.
“She was signing our company’s cheques and paying off shopping she’d done.”
Martin told Walker not to come in the following day. Shortly after, Hemmings recalls, she turned up at the Hemmingses’ home in tears with a cheque for £9,000, claiming it was all she had, having sold
some of her mother’s belongings.
Fearing it was their only chance of repayment, the Hemmingses accepted.
But the couple kept scrutinising their accounts and finally deduced
that a total of £64,000 was missing from the account. The local police were informed and Walker was arrested.

For me, I do think that maybe there was some logical reason why SW did not pay the cash into the bank as @wearycat thought previously. To not bank the money when she knew it was going to be used for wages is insane, but whether deliberate or not, it was enough to make the Hemmings look at the books and began her downfall.

Thanks @RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays

Crazy really. Did she get arrogant, careless, or desperate?

I think there is the same pattern of increasingly daring behaviour, that flouts all norms, in both the lying and the stealing. The wonder is that it works for so long - but it has.

In the next book, the Salt Path will be demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

Things hit a low point over Easter in 2008, when there was not enough money in the accounts to pay the staff’s wages. Luckily, a
customer then paid £600 in cash for a survey. “Instead of putting it in the safe, he asked Sally to pay it into the bank so on Friday he could do the wages,” Hemmings said.

@RainyTuesdaysAndSunnyWednesdays

I don't read the above as showing that SW definitely knew that if she didn't deposit the cash into the company account then the company would be unable to pay its wages. It's a bit ambiguous, but I read it as (1) telling the journalist that Mr Hemmings instructed SW to deposit the cash, and (2) explaining to the journalist the context as why Mr H gave that instruction to SW instead of putting the cash into the safe.

Although as bookkeeper she would have presumably known when the wages were due and how much was in the bank.

PS: That said, given that she was the book keeper, one might expect her to have an idea of the company's financial position without Mr Hemmings drawing it to her attention.

I lean towards it being very calculated as you describe. Of course, she couldn't have known if it would work or be so successful but it was worth a shot.

Also, thinking about it, I wonder if it might just be possible the book began as a fiction based on some real life events (as with HNTDDD, assuming it was inspired by their life in Wales). And over time during writing or approaching agents the idea for it to be pitched as non-fiction "this really happened to the author" seeped in like the salty mists of the tide because that makes it much more appealing. So by that I'm wondering if most of it could already have been written as a fiction and then RW merely recategorised it without accounting for the mistruths and inconsistencies, that would cause no issues in a fictional story. Obviously only she and Tim have the answers.

I forgot to say thank you for posting this. It hadn’t occurred to me to find out the definition and that is incredibly interesting. I wonder why those abnormalities? I’m going to read it now.

I agree @SimoArmo that the book could have started out as fiction, the fact that the walk wasn't mentioned at the 2015 consultation has only two logical reasons the first, that they had not done the walk before 2015, or the second, they deliberately lied about the level of Tim's symptoms, failing to mention his ability to walk 630 miles to the consultant, I favour the not having walked 630 miles.

Salray used the SA mistaken identity to root their story in 2013, there is no dispute that SA was there, no end of people saw him and would be able to affirm his being there in 2013. Always Salray places them ahead of SA, of course they were always ahead of him. Salray could have used SA's 2015 book to help write her own, along with the other books she mentions and a lot of Wikipedia information about homelessness and environmental issues.

I agree with you Freshsocks. She quite likely did use Simon’s 2015 book as well as others to write her story.
i always thought it was strange the way she claimed to have written the book to preserve memories of the walk for Moth and then when her daughter suggested she look at publishing it that happened with very little re-writing.
The book just does not read as having been written for that purpose. There was a lot of background that Moth would have already known and very little of personal shared memories to preserve. And if it was written for him would she have wanted to include all the wailing and “poor me”?