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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