YAY it works :-)

@ Steve .... :-) so easy to miss a pin soldering sometimes or on a breadboard test even forget to put the PIC back into its socket after programming and then watching a blank serial debugger screen :-)
I remember years back in a PC workshop two of the technicians ,on inspection of a 'DEAD PC' that just arrived in, meticulously tested and replaced every component and card (drives,motherboard ,etc) in the PC including the case, eventually out of sheer frustration they called me in to check why it was still dead and the customer had been waiting nearly two weeks for their PC.
I checked the power cable first ... it was plugged into the PSU but it was on a long workbench so I followed the cable to its source... and there was the problem ...the mains switch for the wall plug was OFF :-)

Sometimes even the obvious is not so obvious and often we are in a huge rush, excited to get to the end result as soon as we can.

Thanks Steve and everyone else for all the help so far, I really appreciate it !

Kind regards

Dennis