Hey Andrew Yes, by giving up on Firefox, uninstalling it and making Chrome my default browser - now everything works fine again. Maybe I'll try to reinstall at some point to see if issue is resolved but I hit a wall and didn't want to waste any more time on it.
I didn't try the direct link but thanks anyway.
Still LOVING this game though I've got to 'Winding'and it's getting tricky now - I can see where I need to get everything to but the order of ops is baffling me atm.. Cheers