I logged back in this morning and lo and behold, the force refresh worked, I guess my laptop was for some reason clinging to the past.
Apologies for my grumpiness. Chief I did set about trying your suggestions at one point, I was going to "mark all posts as read" in a particular area of the forum, and at that moment I was kicked out and had to log back in, and was unable to do so for quite a while due to the password change that I only became aware of later. Anyway, all better now, I'll try to be more chipper today.