David & Sean: the hints about cgi-bin and htdocs (plus my own unfollowed-up attempt at 'src' => '../blah.css' were enough. I simply moved blah.css to htdocs, and bingo.
Lawrence: you seem to be suggesting something close to my $css approach, but as I have a couple of other pages to bring into line, the simpler the parameters to ->start_html the happier I shall be. So I'll pinch your hint of using body { css stuff }, and plunk it into blah.css too. Also, I see you're using lots of table style, and I'll pinch that as well, since the only way I'd found to get a nice appearance was <table border="1" bordercolor="color">. Thanks to all, rgds, G. "When in doubt plagiarise; let no-one else's work evade your eyes" ( very loosely, from Tom Lehrer). -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://learn.perl.org/> <http://learn.perl.org/first-response>