Just realised that without the plugins activated there is nothing protecting the sirte from comment spam arriving by the bucketful.
Like it or not I’ll *have* to get on with fixing it all up… or we all know what the result will be… and it won’t be pretty! 
After some time deleting posts… then having to come back to delete more… several times. I finally remembered I’d added my Askimet key years ago so all I needed do was ‘Activate’
Geez I’m in a world of my own sometimes!!
Hopefully that’s the last of the spam comments for the time being.