Thanks,
Earl, I do normally have a Gmail tab open, so I'll test your theory tomorrow. Having said that, I recently noticed that some of my images needed a couple of refreshes to display when I tried a clean install of Chrome on a different computer where NLA was the only tab open!
BTW. That USC aerial above failed three times before I got a successful upload, so Photobucket are definitely trying to play down the scope of their current problems.