5 January 2013 (Saturday) - Panto

This morning's post brought an interesting letter about the refund I am due for all the council tax money I've been paying at too high a rate over the years. Sounds intriguing, doesn't it? Some bunch in Manchester (who presumably have never seen Beaver Road in their lives) would have me believe that (for a fee) they can get my council tax reduced; and get that reduction backdated. They claim I'm due a refund of over a thousand quid in overpaid council tax. All I have to do is give them cash to cover "expenses". I suppose enough people fall for these scams to make it worth their while trying it on.
The post also brought the new spare batteries for my mobile phone. Or so I thought. I have a Samsung Galaxy Ace 2. The batteries are for a Samsung Galaxy Ace (no"2"!), and they don't fit. You'd think that as well as standardising chargers for mobile phones they would standardise batteries too.

To the park where we met Cheryl and Lacey. They had heard good reports on Fudge's progress at being off the lead and wanted to see for themselves. So we took Fudge round the park where he excelled himself. Whilst we were at it I thought I'd see what Lacey thought of geocaching. To my delight she absolutely loved it, and we would seem to have another convert in our midst.
Time was pressing, so we went back to Beaver Lane where "My Boy TM" arrived with the makings of lunch, and after a rather good bit of bread and cheese (I *love* that stuff!) we made Disney princess snow globes. And then home. Via Godington Road where we heard that another new geocache had gone live. In the geocaching world there is great kudos in being first to find. We missed being first by twenty one minutes. We were sixth and seventh; we arrived to find quite the party was going on, and spent a little while chatting with fellow hunters of small plastic boxes.

A quick cuppa, and then we collected first fruit and his entourage and set off to Folkestone. McDinner slipped down very nicely, and then we wandered along the Leas to the Leas Cliff Hall for the pantomime. In years gone by we would always go to Folkestone to see the pantomime. I've not been for a few years, and I have to say I was disappointed. It was a good show, but in the past the theatre would be packed. Today only half the seats were put out that would usually be out, and a large proportion of them were empty. The sound system left much to be desired, and the blatant advertising throughout the show was rather off-putting.
I'm told that pantos of old were amateur productions, but nowadays they are professionally staged events. Whilst tonight's show was good, I preferred the old-style panto...

And then home where I found myself frankly amazed. Despite this cold getting worse and worse, I'd had a wonderful day, and it all went very sour. Earlier in the day there had been a post on the astro club's website about a website purporting to debunk crackpot conspiracy theories. A laudable goal, but this website made quite a lot of unreferenced claims, and prominently featured a link about "debunking BS" . Far from supporting a pragmatic scientific view it made the website seem to be as inflexible and closed-minded as those crackpot theories it sought to expose. Surely there is a difference between the phrases "Employing the Scientific Method" and "Detecting BS".
I'd made a comment to that effect earlier, and suddenly found myself embroiled in a rather confusing tirade of messages. The more I tried to explain my point, the more unfounded aggressive and personal abuse I received until I suddenly found the entire thread deleted from under me.
I'm still wondering what happened. Clearly I've somehow given offence but I don't see how. Why does life always have to be one big argument?


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