I'm making some progress at last , back to # terminal via
recovery mode:
ls -l /home/walter

listed all directories drwxr--r-- 5 777 boot (744)
and files -rw-r--r-- 1 777 files... (644)

So these may not be correct and need sorting out.

However I did a chmod -R 755 /home rebooted and got that haunting
drum role back