@ajroach42 Thank you to all of you - you must be feeling overwhelmed right now by the stampede! One thing, this is an old account I set up in April. Thinking it had 'died' when I left back then, I find its still open and am using it. However, not realising, I registered again and never got a confirmation email - though a message appeared saying my acct was fully functional. So If the attempt to register has produced a new 'account' it can be deleted and I'll use this one.
@TifaDaisyDewdrop Looks like that was all on mastodon.social, which I don't operate (I run a much smaller instance) but if you used the same email address, it will not have created a second account.