Ok, the picture:
The story as well.
The shield was made but I made a mistake with HOW I built it.
See red arrow in picture. I simply put pins BELOW the board to allow the shield to plug into the main board.
After a bit of thinking and seeing the straps and the clock not "ticking" (as well as the weird time/date) I realised that the pins may not be connected from the main board to the tracks on the shield, and that somehow I had to allow what was shown in the PDF to happen.
Then I realised that if I used this set of pins with longer legs, and access points above them, they would do both functions.
So I took the initial pins out - fun! and replaced them with the longer legged version. Then I got the other pins - like the ones used for the LCD access points - top left of the shield - and put some in above the other ones, I would nearly have what was shown on the PDF. AND! I could put in the straps.
At this point there is no RTC, no battery and no EPROM.
Done, plugged in. Garbage. Won't tick, won't set. But the display works. The menus work.
Put in RTC chip and battery. SAME - and before you ask, I'll get to it in due time.
Totally stumped. Looked at code, can't work out what is going on. For the hell of it - and honestly nothing more - I went to the local electronics shop and bought the OPTIONAL EPROM.
Got home, stuck it in - NO RTC, NO BATTERY.
Voila! The clock starts ticking and it is set to the time I "flashed" the main board with on the compile. You know, the part where I un-comment the remarks and set the time further down, flash the chip, then re-comment the instruction.
Powered down, put in RTC and battery, and powered up. All good.
Waited a few minutes and powered down and powered back up. It kept the time.
No, I haven't bothered setting the right time. At this point it was academic.
Every time I put the RTC chip in, it was in the same socket and the same way around.
The ONLY time I put the EPROM in, it is/was in that socket and that way around.