Thanks everyone.
Kon, have you got, or thought of a light pollution filter? They help a lot.
Jo, 10.5 weeks since the weather allowed me to image anything.

Rrussell, You can take short subs with your 8SE if you get a T-ring for
whatever DSLR you have, and then it is just a matter of a little easily
learned basic processing with downloaded freeware such as Deep Sky
Stacker, and/or the camera's own software.
George, The image was taken with the camera's Long Exposure and
High ISO noise reduction functions enabled, and then basic RGB, Luminance, and colour
saturation was adjusted in Deep Sky Stacker [freeware]. I dragged it
into Canon's Zoom Browser EX and slightly increased the contrast, and slightly decreased the brightness. Cropped the image to frame it
nicely. Popped it into my ancient Photoshop 7 to downsize it so it
was under the size limit for posting in IIS. If I was more comp literate,
I am sure that I could find a much less convoluted way of doing it.
I use JPEG because it is more straightforward, although I have been assured by many members that raw will produce superior results.
raymo