Charter, thanks. There appeared to be no way to reorder the way they are listed to provide the desired result, given the order is
Code:
<phpdig:my_header_file/>
normal phpdig code here
<phpdig:my_footer_file/>
moving the footer up or the header down in relation to the phpdig code block made no difference.
I'm on a time limit so I gave up and hardwired the HTML into the template and got the result I 'wanted'. Thanks for your help.