So, as I boot up ready to get some important emails out tonight, I found my start menu had disappeared. The bottom panel was there but no menu.
I did find that I could add start menus from the panel options, something you can’t do in Windows, but still with the three that were available, one didn’t work. And I couldn’t put it back to where it should go, in the bottom left of the panel.
I found some help: Linux Mint forums
All I needed to do was to open a terminal window, CTRL + ALT + T and enter the following:
mate-panel --reset mintmenu --reset
And all is well again.
Thinking about it though, it might be time to reinstall Linux possibly to Ubuntu Mate. I’ll think about it at the weekend.