The road to recovery...

is a bumpy one indeed.
So got myself a genius bar appointment and tried not to freak out too much. They worked out the problem something about software drivers (I sort of zoned out when he started getting technical). Anyway my data could be saved, but not before I bought an external hard drive (£75) and not quickly. So I set up camp in the apple store to back up my MacBook. 1h45m later my data was backed up. I'm now waiting about another 45m for the driver to reinstall.
So my old girl appears to have pulled through, for now!
Happy days :D