  Okay: after weeks of pondering, I've actually gone ahead and tweaked up the side navigation - the blog rolls are tucked into the 'More Places Forever' link there, I've sacked the WordNet dictionary search, as previously intimated, and replaced it with the OED search, AskOxford - I've hacked up the code they supply for the purpose, but the basic functionality is the same. It all seems to work okay at this end on MSIE5.1/Mac, and Mozilla doesn't screw up the layout any worse than it did before (what is it with Mozilla's implementation here?
The javascripts are pretty basic stuff. Any suggestions welcome on that. Seems not to work in Opera either - I may have to re-think my browser test and branching script moratorium...!). If any of these modifications are causing your browser/platform any more terminal grief - I'm especially interested in hearing the view from the Windoze side of the fence - please let me know, we'll see what we can do... 
