David,
All seems to be well to-day: a database update, Mail Scanner and Web Scanner all running normally and not a word of protest from McAfee. As far as asking permission again is concerned, I think the re-appearances of the firewall slider have taken care of that several times over.
I was considering another firewall to replace the McAfee (I hear Comodo is pretty good), but in the two years or so I`ve been using McAfee it has saved my bacon on a number of occasions, stopping some real nasties in their tracks. The latest was something called "Fight me bitch, please". I don`t have a clue what that was all about but it doesn`t sound like my sort of thing at all! (No sex please, we`re British.)
In addition, the program gives me direct access to Hackerwatch. org which is McAfee`s database of worldwide nasties and it provides trace maps so you can see where they originated; all of which I find quite interesting, in a perverse sort of way.
Also, despite the bizarre behaviour of the firewall with regard to the 4.8.1201 program update, it has occurred to me that it was doing exactly, if rather irritatingly, what it was designed to do; namely to alert me to small but potentially harmful changes to known applications.
For these reasons, I think I`ll stay with it for a while and post back if things start going arse over elbow again.