So, after quite a bit of painful, frustrating search on the intertubes, found that there is something called 'xmodmap'
basically;
xmodmap -pke gives the list of current mappings in a format that is digestible by xmodmap itself
xmodmap <file> will load mappings stored in file
given this info, its easy to fix it:
xmodmap -pke > $HOME/.xmodmaprc ; printf ###34m~@~\xmodmap $HOME/.xmodmaprc###34m~@~] > $HOME/fixmyke 777 fixmykeys
then add fixmykeys or the embedded code directly in the bash startup script
Charles