Some of you may know that I am a complete beginner of Turkish except to ask for a drink or a room with a balcony! I'm so eager to learn but I'm struggling forming the most basic of sentences...

Is there a general rule of thumb when forming a sentence i.e word order? I have read somewhere that it is

Subject - Object - Verb
I The Car Wash

You the book Read

Can anyone clear this up for me please? Thanks.

Yes, in Turkish grammer when forming a sentence wod order should be Subject - Object - Verb. But if you change the order, generally, the meaning does not change and people understand you. In English it may seems very strage if you change word order, as "I home go". But In Turkish you can change everything except adjectives before nouns, that's why I said "generally".
In consequence, you can change the word order, but better Turkish is using subj - obj - verb word order

I've remembered an advertisement on TV. They say,
Turkcell'le bağlan hayata
Hayata bağlan Turkcell'le
Bağlan Turkcell'le hayata

"Connect life with Turkcell", a GSM operator ad, they're singing and telling these sentences. These three sentences have same meaning. They only change word order, but meaning is still the same

Wow, turkish seems to be such a flexible language. You would think it would make it easier

So, if I wanted to write "darling I must go to the shop" I can write it in Turkish in exactly that order and still get my meaning across?

I have a lot to learn! :-S

Yes you can write it by different orders.

Sevgilim, dükkana gitmeliyim *
Dükkana gitmeliyim sevgilim
Sevgilim gitmeliyim dükkana

But Darling is an exclamation word so if you say this sentence like below, it would be very strange

Dükkana sevgilim gitmeliyim.....

So sevgilim should be written first or last. But the better sentence is with "*".

Confused!

I understand what you're saying though. The problem i have is that I'm not taking classes so I have no interaction with the Turkish language. All of my knowledge is having to come from books. My partner will only ever text me in Turkish in an attempt to help me.

I think I will sit down and try and write something...a small paragraph about me, my family, my job etc (keep it VERY basic) and maybe someone in the forum could look over it?

Yes, try something. We can check it out.