Update works but no logs - Desktop Widget reports 'never updated'

[Peejay]

Thank you, Trinidad.
I can confirm that the file is as the original. I haven't amended it at all and it has not been corrupted in any way.
I see that at the end of the widget file it makes a call to ~/.conky/updates and in turn that checks on the hisory.log in /var/log/apt/

The last entry in my history.log is for 24 November 2017, with no end date entry.

But Updates are happening and always produce a LLUpdates.log.

After 24 November 2017 I have LLUpdates.log files for
24/12/2017
26/12/2017
04/01/2018
09/01/2018
22/01/2018
06/02/2018
12/02/2018

In this sequence is the upgrade to 3.8, but it doesn't show in the history.log for apt.

The only other thing I've noticed is that when it's happening the update process disappears totally from the desktop. There is no Gui, no terminal output, no icon in the status bar, but apt processes do show up in Task Manager and I can tell updates are happening from the disk activity. I should say that the disk is a SSD but this was a new installation on to it, not cloned from the old disk.

Thank you for your help so far, much appreciated. I hope this extra information helps give the context  better but of course if you need something different I'll be happy to generate/supply it for you.