Pairing bluetooth devices

Hi

I have been trying to hook up a bluetooth speaker with my t400s laptop. I've not done this before so am working a bit in the dark, but I installed blueman (sudo apt-get install blueman) and used have used the ui to detect the device.

However when I try to pair it always fails.

I am currently attempting to do this by selecting the device in the gui, going to Setup.., selecting 'Pair' radio button and pressing 'Next'. It hangs around for a bit before coming up with the message 'Failed'.

In the suslog all I see is the message:
org.bluez.Error.ConnectionAttemptFailed: Page Timeout
when I close the setup dialog.

Does anyone know how I can/should pair a bluetooth device ? Or know how I can get more information to troubleshoot ?

system info:
Linux technoethical-t400s-b9d0 4.19.0-gnu #1 SMP Mon Oct 22 06:05:01 PDT 2018 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

cat /etc/os-release
NAME="Trisquel GNU/Linux"
VERSION="8.0, Flidas"
ID=trisquel
ID_LIKE=debian
PRETTY_NAME="Trisquel GNU/Linux Flidas (8.0)"
VERSION_ID="8.0"
HOME_URL="https://trisquel.info/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://trisquel.info/wiki"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://trisquel.info/project/issues"