Thank you all. I have tracked the problem down to update placing an under resourced folder in the search.bundle package (that I had moved out originally and lost). replaced that with a good one and all is well.
I disabled spotlight some time time ago and since then have ungraded the oS. In enabling spot light again search.bundle in the Library/coreservices folder hides all the menu bar ie date,time etc I recall seeing a note about this many months ago when it first happened but, can't remember the...