Shell, Jen, the meet is a side issue...
I sent Cruiser some PMs about things and they sat there for days unread even though he was in here posting. I was just trying to help him out because maybe he didn't realise about the control panel thing and the options. It is no palaver at all.
My thinking was that sending him another PM telling him to read the PMs he had not read seemed pretty pointless, hence the use of Cafe.
I used to get email notifications about PMs and even though the box is ticked they have stopped coming. If I was not logged in to VV and someone had sent me a PM it would go to email, which is always on, and from there I could see it had arrived and login to read it. That no longer happens and they are not in any spam folder so it's a bit of a mystery and that's why I use the method mentioned in my post. It is not a remotely private issue and, who knows, it might help some others.
Just as an aside.... I do not have a clue on how to go about making a thread private as I have never done it.