My goodness, herne are you trying to tell us something - 'lost businesses (and in fact whole countries) and had plastic surgery'. Are you Alan Sugar - he's done two out of that list but I don't think even Surralan has ever ruled an actual kingdom (apart from Amstrad and Dodgy Del's Quality Goods).
Oh Deah!!
What can I say, skatequeen. I was crouched over the computer, cackling evilly, vitriol dripping on the keyboard, and the thought crossed my mind that even by my low standards I was being kind of mean. So I thought I'd type a couple of lines to try and justify my attitude. Big Mistake! Meaness on forum - quite acceptable. Melodrama(lost countries) - totally unacceptable (and rightly so)
We left South Africa as very young children and Rhodesia was our country. My husbands parents and one of his brothers were killed in the Rhodesia bush war - an unjust war in the eyes of a large part of the world, but our losing the war resulted in Robert Mugabe renaming the country Zimbabwe (fair enough) and using the entire country as his own private ATM (not fair) Also not fair was Bad Bob immediately bringing in the Koreans to commit genocide against the many thousands of black people in the Matabele province who did not support him. Our family farm was rather successful, so it was one of the first to be taken. The fields lie empty, the school and clinic my husbands parents built are in ruins. Then a rather attractive apartment block caught someones eye and a compulsary purchase order was issued and we were paid the equiv. of £1000 sterling for the property. So we moved to South Africa. Built up a rather thriving business, wonderful lifestyle AND THEN.........(please insert another African story over the dots) And now we live on this lovely little island. Built up a business etc etc, smug smiles all round, then a big black storm cloud rolled across the heavens and a thunderous voice bellowed " I am going to smite this land with one of the worst recessions ever known to man, and then we shall see what happens to your business"(yours and several thousand others) and our smug smiles became very unsmug BUT we are the lucky ones, and we don't ever forget that.
As for the plastic surgery - no elbow suction, no leg shortening. Just a few tweeks, nips, tucks and the post op realisation that the before and after pics were hardly any different. Sigh.........