Many thanks for both replies. Everything seems fine now.
Reinstalling the packages using "py" made them available in v3.9.6. So
I could delete them from
C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Packages\PythonSoftwareFoundationPython.3.8.qbz5n2kfra8p0\LocalCache\local-packages\Python38\site-packages
In fact I deleted the whole of
C:\Users\...\AppData\Local\Packages\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.8.qbz5n2kfra8p0
Asking where "python" finds its (supposed uninstalled) v3.8.10
executable was sending me to
'C:\Users\…\AppData\Local\Microsoft\WindowsApps\PythonSoftwareFoundation.Python.3.8_qbz5n2kfra8p0\python.exe'
but deleting as above meant there is no longer a "python" command to
worry about.
I may try to remove that whole subdirectory of WindowsApps and the
somewhat similar one in C:\Program Files\WindowsApps
I think any other applications that use python probably have their own
copy of python.exe — LibreOffice and GIMP 2 certainly have, with version
numbers which are different again.
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