Odd as it sounds, I seem to have trouble removing directories, when I try:

  rm directory

I get the error:

  rm: cannot remove ‘alan’: Is a directory

If I do a ls -a -l to see the directory contents I get:

  total 8
  drwxrwxr-x+ 2 pi pi 4096 Aug  1 21:58 .
  drwxrwxr-x+ 3 pi pi 4096 Aug  1 21:58 ..

total 8 - 8 what??
Anyway, this will remove a directory (and any files in it)

  rm -r directory

You need to be 100% sure that there is nothing in the directory you need before you do this.