Thanks for your reply Welshblue. I'm getting the idea. I am just a bit intimidated by the whole layers thing. I find the MS paint textbox with transparency settings easy to understand and use.
Your tools menu has a primary/secondary color palette in the top right hand corner and does not. I am using the latest version (3.5.10)
At the moment (after your advice) I manage with the following procedure
1. Add two layers
2. On layer 3 write some text in primary colour (red)
3. on layer 2 draw a box in secondary colour (white)
4. Select paint bucket tool on layer 2 and paint the box with secondary colour (white)
This seems slightly different. what am I doing wrong?
Another question: can i set the transparency of layer two so that I can still see some of the background behind it?
Thanks