So after struggling to find a solution I **may** have found one that works. Though I’ve found searching for the ‘Error establishing a database connection’ message brought up a lot of new installation advice. My problem has been it was occasionally losing the connection.
The wp-config.php file has a line to define the Db_Host location. This was the local host name. I’ve found that putting the localhost IP address seems to bring the blog back up. Without requiring a reboot (which is nice).
So I will be monitoring. This blog and Photoblography.net seem to have been fixed with the same procedure. My test blog is till not communicating with the MySql service (but I’ll leave that as a guide).