Thanks for the suggestions. I don't know how to make .wine a link to my hard-drive or how to change tmpfs and both sound complicated so I went for the 'use other media' suggestion.
I managed to get skype to open and messaging works. The skypecall functions are there as well but audio doesn't work for me ('soundcard doesn't support direct access'). It feels a bit fragile though, has thrown several exception faults when opening and doesn't seem to exit properly when closed (I have to ctl-z to exit wine).
However I've been able to use it for messaging and it didn't crash once it was up and running which is good enough for me at the moment. It also survived a reboot and still works. Thanks.
Here's what I did if anyone else using an eeepc 701 is interested, bear in mind that I know nothing about Linux, Windows or computing and I'm 100% sure better ways exist but, this is what worked for me.
I installed skype to a windows formatted SD card from within TC using wine;
1. Downloaded the old version of skype from oldapps.com as recommended in the post above. - After downloading I had a file called Skype-setup-3.1.0.152.exe in my /home/tc/Desktop folder.
2. I downloaded and installed wine.tce using the appbrowser.
3. I mounted the sd card and with emelfm created a directory on it called /tcskype
4. I opened a terminal and typed 'winecfg', a window opened. I clicked on the 'drives' tab and then 'Add...' It created a D: drive for me, which I selected, I then Browsed to find the mounted sd card which was /mnt/sdc1/tcskype in my case. This told wine where my new 'windows' D: drive lives.
5. Because an eeepc screen cuts off the wineconfig window halfway I couldn't get at the 'Apply' or 'Save' buttons. I had to tab through and guess when I was on the right button. I was lucky, I eventually hit the right button. This saved the configuration and wine remembered the D: drive.
6. From the terminal I then cd'd to the directory where Skype-setup-3.1.0.152.exe was saved- cd /home/tc/Desktop in my case.
7. In the terminal I typed 'wine Skype-setup-3.1.0.152.exe'
8. A Skype window opened! I chose my language, I accepted terms and conditions, I clicked on 'options' and deselected everything except 'install Skype extras manager'.
9. In the 'choose install location' I selected the D: drive and the /tcskype directory as the location to install skype to. I clicked install.
10. Skype unpacked and installed to the external sd card (expect to see a lot of messages in the terminal window).
11. I think when it finished installing it told me that it had installed correctly and then exited back to the terminal prompt.
12. At the terminal in TC I cd'd to the sd card and my /tcskype directory. The install had created a directory called 'Phone' which contained the Skype.exe. I cd'd into the Phone directory.
13. At the terminal I typed 'wine Skype.exe'
14. Skype opened. I chose not to install the Gecko Mozilla engine and just cancelled the window that asks for it. I could log in! It took a long time to connect, I waited! Eventually my contacts appeared.
I can send messages, I can't make calls though, they ring on the other end of the line but my sound isn't working. I have oss and alsa installed. Sound works on firefox and mplayer but not on this wine/Skype combo - the terminal messages say;
This soundcard does not support direct access
Direct sound HEL mode will be used instead.
Direct sound capture flag not set
Apologies for such a long description. It might help fellow newbies, it might not. Keep up the good work. Skype messaging is all I need at the moment.