Thanks for the help, both of you. I played safe, took some bricks from a skip and propped her up, a trip to a localish dealers had me sorted.

Lubed it up proper, as advised, though I am not sure how much is gonna fly out as I'm moving - I may have been too generous! I also forgot to check if the lube will react with the rubber.... I'll check the state of them again when I have finished my trip tomorrow. (The lube I used was decent stuff, but from the 1980s!!)

For anyone who arrives here for info, though not many here will be as clueless as me.... The wear needed seeing to, it feels far better to ride, but there was nowhere near to any metal on metal contact as far as I could tell; I could have just done the trip, as advised above. Hopefully this will provide a bit of of a video based answer to anyone asking the same question!