Thanks for your time, you have been really helpful this whole thread, I do appreciate it!
I have contacted RS-online and they are shipping a new board out to me and don't need the old one back.
I think I'll try writing sketches straight to the chip using either ArduinoISP or an ICSP cable I am yet to build (I ordered a PCIe parallel port for $4 and found the tutorial for the cable) to use if I ever decide to make a project a permanent product. On that note could someone direct me to a tutorial on the process of getting a sketch running with no boot loader, specifically what if any changes do I need to make to my code?
Thanks again everyone for all the help