For some reason, several attempts at getting NOOBS installed on the 32GB SD card failed - and yes I scoured the net quite thoroughly and came up with 2-3 different methods of getting the card formatted and transferring the contents of the NOOBs folder to the card, but it still would not boot - regardless if I did the work under Windows or Linux.
But putting the latest Rasbian Jessie image on the SD card worked like a charm and the Pi booted up and auto-logged in without trouble and - more importantly - without the blinking menu space seen in my video posted earlier in this thread. Touch events worked 'out of the box'.
Now just waiting to see if the 'right-click' issue can be solved for Jessie ( related to https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=108&t=121602 ) Of course that is for another thread!
Thanks for your input!