ok - just changed to electrum.pdmc.net, tried sending again and ..... was about to report it was still "hanging" but after 3-4 minutes it did actually send.
Perhaps I should have just been more patient with the earlier send but I did wait at least 10 minutes.
Does the send slow down if the servers get "overloaded"? Is there any timeouts on them? e.g. if its still spinning the lovely little rainbow mouse after 10 minutes, should I leave it running? I don't like "force quitting" anything, especially stuff like wallet software, but I didn't think i had a choice earlier today.
Happy its working now though and thanks for the reply