i can get to my 'about' page and a couple of other pages but there is no link (or way, as far as i can tell) to edit t/ 'home page'. Can anyone help? Thank you

the 'home' page is your front page or the blog page unless you changed it in the dashboard->settings->reading
I suggest you look at this post (http://forum.bytesforall.com/showthread.php?t=3845) and do a bit of reading