trouble with upgrade of asdf and versions

[adam]

In attempting to upgrade ASDF, I have broken its operation. 

This work-around has not been helpful. 
https://stackoverflow.com/q/45043190/8770050


Here is the problem, (and Quicklisp seems to be working OK)


CL-USER> (ql:quickload :quickproject)
; Evaluation aborted on #<ASDF-2.26:LOAD-SYSTEM-DEFINITION-ERROR #x213E199E>.

CL-USER> (asdf:asdf-version)
"3.3.2"

CL-USER> *features*
(:SWANK :ASDF3.3 :ASDF3.2 :ASDF3.1 :ASDF3 :OS-UNIX :QUICKLISP :ASDF2 :ASDF-UNICODE :CM
:SAL :METACLASSES :ASDF :READLINE :REGEXP :SYSCALLS
 :I18N :LOOP :COMPILER :CLOS :MOP :CLISP :ANSI-CL :COMMON-LISP :LISP=CL :INTERPRETER
:SOCKETS :GENERIC-STREAMS :LOGICAL-PATHNAMES :SCREEN
 :FFI :GETTEXT :UNICODE :BASE-CHAR=CHARACTER :PC386 :UNIX)


My Lisp and Emacs versions, on Ubuntu 16.04, are 

$ clisp --version 
GNU CLISP 2.49 (2010-07-07) (built on allspice.buildd [127.0.1.1])

Emacs version
GNU Emacs 24.5.1 (i686-pc-linux-gnu, GTK+ Version 3.18.9) of 2017-09-21 on lgw01-amd64-
050, modified by Debian 


Any suggestions on repairing or upgrading my ASDF, gratefully received.