Thanks I'll get the pidgin updates.
Funny thing I started pidgin just now and under "invisible" mode it
would not co-operate so just for the heck of it I went "visible" and
it started working!!!
I don't see why altering my availability status should affect pidgin
connecting to Yahoo but maybe it does???
Anyhow I can try this clue in future, might just be one of a thousand
tricks I gotta learn in order to be a Linux person