PMs = Personal Messages, in this case. Head to head conflicts are maybe better not on the threads, because it gets catching.

One problem with Mudcat time is that it sometime runs very fast. If you don't check the times, it can look like a long time has passed between two successive posts by the same person.

In this case it just over 24 hours between Peg's misleading post, and the one from her clarifying the situation. Only the posts are going so fast at this time, and what would normally be recognised as figurative language was in fact only too horribly plausible as a statement of literal fact. Emotions are very raw at present.