Rhys you poor unpleasant individual! I just read the last page and that alone was enough to make me cry!
Keep your chin up dude, eventually the bugs will be eliminated one at a time, and one day.......one day you will be flying through some Clarendon back road grinning like a fool....and you will have forgotten the dark days you have described here in this thread.
I once had a beach of a Capri that behaved in a same manner, so I wrote out a list of the problems as I sorted them. Eventually after two pages of writing I had the thing running well enough to sell it (it was used by the new owner in a bank robbery...but that's another story).
Write a list of 'solved' problems.. and I guarantee you'll feel better about how the car is progressing. Good luck with it, and I look forward to hearing tales of months and months of reliable running once it's all sorted.
RJ