Thread 26 : To feel disappointed - and disgusted and vindicated now too - after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film?

[DisappointedReader]

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL

Please see the OP of Thread 25 for all the links to The Observer's reporting and podcast series, our threads one to 24 and so on.

After 25,000 posts there are still new things to discuss:
BBC Sounds - Secrets of the Salt Path - Available Episodes
If you are posting about a podcast, please start your post with the episode number you are commenting on, for clarity and to help others avoid spoilers if they wish to do so.

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. The Observer's excellent podcast series The Walkers (link in Thread 25) covers most things.
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, 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. For over 8 months we have done amazingly well together for 25 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.

As ever, as we embark on our 26th thread riding the community charabanc, keep to the path, no saltiness, eat fudge and drink cider.

NO POSTS PLEASE UNTIL THREAD 25 IS FULL: www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5485730-thread-25-to-feel-disappointed-and-disgusted-and-vindicated-now-too-after-reading-this-in-the-observer-about-the-author-and-her-husband-from-the-salt-path-book-and-film?

@Vroomfondleswaistcoat that made me laugh! 😀
Moth Winn, ‘few literary figures have captured readers’ I haven’t clicked to read more but just that alone makes me think of a fictional character. Forget Odysseus. Moth Winn is where “it’s” at. Ai Sally clings to him in case he takes flight.

So it looks like “the team” has been grifting together for a while. I had a strong suspicion about the children but never voiced my opinion. Just a reminder, the Times article reportedly states the couple had “two young children, Rowan and Tristan.” They’ve all given themselves new names, just in case.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree…

I also believe Alice Walker posed for the HNTDDD cover photo a few stones ago 🤣

Edited typo.

Afternoon all. I hope you are well today and coping with the heat. I've been considering changing my name this week to DisappointedMeltingReader. With the combination of the heat and the prospect of thread 27, I'm feeling a little faint and in need of smelling salts.

The aroma of TSP 'Team' remains distinctly fishy and now combined with AI BS and eggs. I suppose anyone can set up a website or webpage, use AI to write some nonsense and create strange-looking and misleading photos. Perhaps we should try it and put the terrier amongst the chickens. Perhaps the eggs were a Freudian slip on Salray's part, admitting that she and 'The Team' have scrambled the truth about long distance walks and terminal illness, and poached the creative ideas and money of others including our Poet Laureate, vulnerable elderly relatives and trusting friends and employers. I don't know how the heart emoji people on Instagram square their support and defence of Raynor Winn industries, knowing what they have done. It's one thing to present fiction as fact, quite another to steal and to lie about terminal illness. I don't know how 'The Team' can live with themselves, let alone continue to court attention via Instagram. If I were them, (not that I would ever sink as low as them, imperfect as I am and we all are), I would be hanging my head in shame and hiding away from public attention forever more.

The Walker-Winns aren't alone in choosing to draw attention to themselves, despite what they have done, via false memoirs as we already know. Janice Nix (previously known as Janice Thomas) is another one. She has just been sentenced to 12 years for the 1978 manslaughter of her 5 year old stepdaughter Andrea Bernard and the abuse over 3 years of Andrea's 7-9 year old brother Desmond. The offences came to light when Desmond, now an adult, recently courageously came forward. In the intervening period Nix had written a self help memoir Breaking Out about her life, was interviewed by the BBC and had accepted an employment award. She even mentions the children in the book, using pseudonyms and failing to mention that one of them had died, she had killed her and abused them both. By Penguin and Raynor Winn standards, I suppose Breaking Out could be described as 'unflinchingly honest' too.
Warning: distressing details are included in this article
'My stepmum killed my sister and made me lie about it but now we have justice' - BBC News

The truth will out. It just needs someone with enough courage and some light.

Yes, it’s really grim. “People trust me”. How awful!

@DisappointedReader I don't know how 'The Team' can live with themselves, let alone continue to court attention

They love the limelight:

Rowan Alice — Bio Sites

Note the HARE!
I can’t access the website.

Hi @Thatwasonesteptofar are you a new charabancer? Well spotted the hare. I posted a similar promotion before from Alice - to show that she is a dab hand at getting the attention but also hiding the particulars - and most likely managing her mother's IG.

Hello fellow charabancers! I’ve been a long-time lurker and have posted under a different name on a few previous threads. I’m genuinely delighted to see the charabanc is still rolling and that new members keep hopping on board.
I really need to get an IG account sorted so I can finally fulfil my destiny as an IG correspondent 🤣
I’m absolutely convinced Alice is running her mum’s IG… The Team of Grifters.

Well, great that you have un-lurked. Brilliant about the IG - it looks like that's what's needed currently. Careful of too much cider in this weather though ...

@MulberryBrandy
Thanks for such a warm welcome! I’ll take care of the IG account and start keeping up to date with The Dream Team’s activities!
I can’t believe they’re pretending like nothing happened. Business as usual!
I’ll take your advice about cider, although it won’t be easy 🤣

The children's real first names are Alice and Tristan (so says ancestry). 'Rowan' is not part of Alice Walker's real name.

Well it seems that all the talk of IG has put the wind up Alice (and strongly suggests she reads these here threads), unless of course it is pure coincidence like the tortoise and peregrin episodes in TSP. Why? Because she has deleted her IG account in the past couple of hours.

[ETA maybe it is so she can concentrate on curating "Raynor's" account?]

Page 40 already!

I’m pretty sure The Grim Team has been following these threads with great interest from the very beginning.

Wow, has she really?! I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocent explanation 🤣. Obviously, it’s much easier to delete an entire profile than to go through every single post that might inconveniently expose her parents a little more—and, of course, her own alleged involvement in the scam.

Welcome @Thatwasonesteptofar !
Brilliant post @DisappointedReader . No, I’m not coping very well in the heat, I’ve had two random naps today and the second was completely unintentional and I’m just grateful not to have been operating heavy machinery at the time. I came to, stretched out on the ground, nose to nose with my cat and with a handful of melting oil pastels.

Thank you for the bio link @MulberryBrandy … posing with a Harley, of course, what else?
Hares as a company name carries a lot of symbolism but again I dislike the Walkers’ continued use of animals as comparisons for themselves and their behaviour. Using animals gives the impression of something wild and unbound by human rules and is something to disguise themselves with because animals are unaccountable for their actions which are driven by instinct and evolution. Making people see them this way provides an excuse, even if it’s an unconscious reaction. None of them seem particularly shy or retiring, humble or happy to live a basic life in which the most important things are free for example. In the beginning the huge thefts were spurred on by greed and the idea for a story that would trick people into parting with their money in a legitimate way still strikes me as being just dirty even if it was pure luck that it did so well, it was the “honest” tag and the hardship followed by miracle and salvation which surely took it to peoples hearts and made it a success. They can’t stop though. Even though she admitted that HNTTD was her first book she didn’t apologise for the fact that TSP won the CB prize. They haven’t apologised to the PSPA charity or acknowledged that they were dropped. They are a deluded bunch if they really think they can style this out as though it is a mere hiccup. Do they really think that Raynor Winn is a golden goose? (More egg references!)

I don't know if the deletion of her IG account was a blip but it's still showing for me. alicerowalker. She also has another one called Rowanalice but that one is private.

Roll up, roll up with your ice pops and water bottles Melting Maidens and Combustible Chaps for the charabanc journey over to our 1st Anniversary thread:
Thread 27 : To feel disappointed - and disgusted and vindicated now too - after reading this in The Observer about the author and her husband from The Salt Path book and film? | Mumsnet

In TSP RW/SW refers to their (adult) children as Rowan and Tom. I wonder if Alice, whose birth name is Alice Charlotte Louise, had herself chosen Rowan as a nickname or fantasy name , even as a child. To use it as her professional name would be odd if its only manifestation was in TSP.

Tristan’s middle name is Thomas so that’s easily explained, and I’m not aware of him having used other than his birth name professionally.

Pleased to see you on board again @Thatwasonesteptofar, the charabanc is running smoothly and the cider is chilled, thanks to@DisappointedReader :)

Great posts about the kit photo, I enjoyed all the egg references. They are a couple of rotten eggs @Peladon and it seems like Alice is as hardboiled as her parents. I think Alice does see Raynor Winn as a golden goose @HatStickBoots, I expect she is thinking that lots of people do bad things and continue on so why shouldn't her mum, but her mum wasn't giving bad fashion advice, I'm not sure that Alice will be able to style this out.

To use it as her professional name would be odd if its only manifestation was in TSP.

Unless she hoped/s to cash in on her parents' fame and fortune by more openly being 'the girl from the books'. Slightly more difficult now her parents' misdemeanours have been exposed.

Though the only time she appears in TSP it’s because she’s gone far too sensible for her wild and kerrazy parents and is apparently behaving like SW’s mother (which, given how SW had stolen from her elderly mother and then depicted her as a joyless, stern conformist who hated Divine Moth, is quite the statement) and has a walk-on part when she misses a bus in Italy in order to tug at the reader’s heartstrings because tragic SW can’t be a proper mother from her tragic tent on the SWCP.

I mean, it doesn’t say ‘Tell me more about his fascinating individual’ to me…?

So well put @NervesofSteel and well remembered! When I read it, I had a distinct impression of Saffy from Absolutely Fabulous. How wrong that was. Yes. The negative, comparison with the child’s grandmother 🤯 At any point did this young woman read her mother’s book and think “What? That’s not me?”. So this characterisation was obviously invented by both as they sat round the kitchen table. I do love the way you write. The “tragic tent” 😀 indeed! Could this have been any more contrived?

Does anyone else remember that Raynor story from lockdown. Where the daughter is abroad and falls through a roof? I can't remember where the article was from?

Now you put it like that @NervesofSteel...😂

I was thinking more from the angle of forging a link between her real name, pseudonym and therefore creating 'my mother is a best-selling author, a film has been made about my parents with Hollywood stars blah de blah'.

All aboard...