This forum, as a newbie to learning Swift, sadly didn't solve my issue so after a lengthy search for help from within Xcode help, the web including the Apple website I thought wearily I would ask ChatGPT before hitting the sack, (not out of frustration although I was, but because I needed a sleep😀). It came up with this which helped me solve the problem:
"Make sure that the "Show Debug Area" option is selected in the View menu of Xcode. This will display the sidebar if it is currently hidden.
If you have multiple pages in your playground, make sure that you have selected the correct page in the sidebar.
If you have checked all of these things and you are still not seeing the output in the sidebar, try restarting Xcode or creating a new playground and see if the issue persists."
When I came back to my computer the next day and selected "Debug Area" from the View menu and clicked on "Activate Console" voila it's working! The ChatGPT instructions got me there it seems (although I'm aware ChatGPT has its limitations including not being peer reviewed in its answers).