Thanks for the reply Christopher. As someone on this forum said somewhere " you do it because you want to learn not that you have to " So sometimes you need a sense of humour . to get through the difficult times . Your response was very useful though .It shows how important theory is . I'll learn from that. Saying that I've carried on. Changed the height of how I hold the guitar altered my thumb position , and I'm getting there slowly. Little way to go to get there though. Thanks again, it shows if you can't manage something, there is possibly a way around it until you can master it. Eric