Ok, so I logged in, again.
The message was still there.
I selected Virtuemart -> Tools and it reverted to the the Yellow box, inviting a new subscription because my previous one had expired.
I have renewed, input the new membership number and all is now ok, again.
I doubt it was the selection of the Tools option which cured the issue as I had gone through the list previously.
Nor, a novel way of inviting a new subs.
More likely the server-down as you suggested.
Anyway, back to sleep now.
Take care
Eddie