Category Archives: Mick Hart’s Diary 2026

Racists in the UK! WokForkers pub in London, where the staff monitor everyone for racist comments - if you are white! AI-generated image

Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job

A racist-themed evening down at the local

29 July 2026 – Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job

The images in this post have been generated using artificial intelligence and are intended for illustrative purposes only. None of the visuals imply any real-world endorsement, affiliation, or association with any specific product, brand, or entity. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), places, or events is purely coincidental.

[Posted in category Mick Hart’s Diary 2026]

In case you haven’t noticed or are a liberal lefty in lefty denial, there is, in the UK today, a severe and palpable sense of racially aggravated unease among the rightful heirs of our British heritage. Failed socially engineered multiculturalism, the daily arrival of ‘boat people’ flooding with open government arms into blighted Britain, high-profile racially motivated vicious crimes where the victim is almost exclusively white, a tension that is tangible and alleged two-tier policing are polarising the political spectrum into those who crave more woke and migrants and those who never asked for either and feel they could do quite well without.

Our esteemed former prime minister, the man who everybody likes to dislike, even by those of his own kind, who, in spite of loss of support, including from those in his own party, refused to take the glaring hint and would not pack his bags and go until he was given the royal arse-boot, was too busy during his time in office posing for cheesy, smarmy photos with Ukraine’s converted comedian, the ubiquitous Mr Zelensky, rather than do what Britons demand and ultimately deserve, which is to tackle the immigrant crisis.

Any hope that the new Labour hopeful, Andrew ‘call me Andy’ Burnham, and his newly elected cabinet (bye-bye, Mr Lammy) will apply themselves to this existential problem is not a hope that we should cling to. As long as the old two past-it parties continue to be voted in by the stuck-in-their-ways, heads-up-their-arses, gormless British electorate, the streets of Britain will grow more dangerous, and our towns and cities will become, as many are already, the unrecognizably menacing places that the prophet Enoch Powell predicted all those years ago.

Meanwhile, as Andy Burnham and his Labour cohorts celebrate accession into the breach, a little-known chain of public houses, once celebrated for common sense, seem bent on repositioning themselves as number one in the woke parade.

Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job

A few weeks ago, I ventured out for a pint at my friend’s local WokeForkers. It was that evening on the day of the week when I expected the pub to be quiet, which, indeed, it initially was, little knowing, however, that the latest roster of bar staff (these pubs seem to change their bar staff faster than I can change my underpants – old proverb, every gusset has a suspect lining) had just emerged from company training, from which, and I kid you not, not one of the dunces or dullards had mastered the art of anything, least of all, I warrant, the essential public relations skills which, for as long as hospitality has existed, have always been first and foremost for running a pub successfully.

This, however, was not the least among their greatest disadvantages, although the one begets the other, for they were also of that dismal generation, which, duly processed, packed and prepared by the corporate liberal sausage factory, the British education system, programmes the poor unfortunate wretches for a life of second-class citizenship, making them fat between the ears, ready for the country’s future, which many pundits see as comparable to a slaughterhouse.

I have no idea, do you, where some pubs get their staff from? They seem, by their dour expressions, surly, disinterested ways and chip-on-the-shoulder attitudes, as if, like Zelensky’s army, they have been dragged off from the streets. Whatever it is they teach them at Pub Mismanagement School, devotion to duty isn’t it, neither are the principal tenets required of the hospitality trade, such as amiability, affability, congeniality and conviviality, and above all and most importantly, the indisputable golden rule that customers should at all times be treated with respect – as the customers are those very people who, by putting their money over the bar, pay the barmaids’ wages.

Perhaps the problem lies in the fact that most of the staff are female, and those who aren’t are not much different, for even those whose gender poses difficult questions look and act as though every moment is a hormonal crisis. It only goes to show that in any mismanaged democracy, you need to be extremely careful who you give the vote to, let alone give them leave to stand mardy and daft behind the bar as if the menopause arriving early has turned off the smile along with the taps and all they are waiting to do is call ‘last orders’. Now, don’t call me sexist! Like the WokeForker’s staff who earole everyone, I am merely repeating what I heard someone say at a table whose conversation was personal, private and had nothing to do with me whatsoever. {The opinions in this post are not necessarily those of the person you might think I am.}

On the drinking night in question, the night I had anticipated would be pleasantly quiet, the one thing I had not bargained for was a themed evening revolving around “You can’t say that; it’s racist?”

Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job

Now this particular pub in Wellsford Garden City stands at a junction with Ethnic Street. And one of the reasons I like to drink there is that by sitting next to the windows, you can watch the world, such as it is or as it has sadly become, go by, whilst wishing it would go away. How much nicer it would be to gaze through those same windows and see on the other side of them Britain as it used to be before the migrant invasion (a cluster of wistful, heartfelt sighs!).

“You’re not supposed to say that!”

“I know. It’s a bugger, isn’t it.”

Psychologist, psychiatrist, anthropologist, social historian, time traveller, circus trainer, zookeeper, most emphatically zookeeper, but anyone, in fact, who is seeking a snapshot of UK life can get it from one of these window seats, and once you are over the shock of it  – to do this takes two or three visits – the spectacle unfolding is almost as freakishly entertaining as it is distressing. We’ll say no more of that. Ungird your loins, as most of them do, and go and see for yourselves.

On the evening when my account took place, we had not long taken temporary residence in these very seats, which look out onto the madness at which I have hinted, when, flying around the corner on two wheels, like something out of an ancient Sweeney episode or a cartoon from the 1960s, came a cop car at full tilt.

Something serious must have occurred, but what? Had someone been making mean tweets on his phone? Had an act of terrorism taken place that urgently needed to be hushed up in the interests of ‘race relations’? Was the High Street under siege by a terrifying far-right rally attended by two old grannies; a woman who dared to call herself that; and a moved-from-Rochdale (quickly) choirboy who, whilst not yet supporting Labour, might be trained to do so when he’s given the vote at the age of 13? (Roll up! Roll up! Here exclusively in the UK, Labour’s young performing poodles!) But no, we were wrong on every count. Whatever it was that had kicked off, it was here, among us, at WokeForkers, whose highly intelligent bar staff had gone and called the old bill.

The marauding cop car screamed to a halt, as they so dramatically do in 1940s black-and-white films (careful what you say there!), and seconds later in they marched – two of Britain’s finest: one with a head that was really quite bald and the other wearing his colleague’s toupee, which, dislodged when the driver hit the brakes, had landed on his chin, lending him the appearance of the Wild Man from Borneo, which I suppose must mean he lives in Luton.

Racists in the UK! Police in UK WokeForkers pub march in: one is bald, the other is wearing his colleague's toupee on his chin. AI-generated image
AI-generated image

As we were sitting miles away from the bar (it’s a prudent thing to do, out of earshot of the WokeForkers’ Stasi), we couldn’t at all make out what was going on, but we knew that it must be serious, for why else would the police have been called?

After a full ten minutes in which nothing happened at all, a tall gent, foreign-looking, wearing what looked like a Chinese face and carrying a populist tote bag (it had a Union Jack on its side) marched defiantly, with no police escort, as though he were guilty of nowt, apart from the tartan kilt he was wearing, across the space of the room and disappeared onto the street.

You would have thought that being let off by our more than lenient British policemen (well, I said that he was foreign-looking, or he would have been arrested), the accursed fiend would have counted his blessings and made himself particularly scarce, but this he did not do. No sooner had he exited than he was spotted by one of our party eating apples near the pub’s back door. Eating apples! Near the pub’s back door!!!! His unacceptable presence must have been detected by one of WokeForkers’ ever-vigilant CCTV installations (for if ever a street was in need of a camera, then Ethnic Street is it), as moments later, the dynamic duo – Baldy booby and Beardy bobby – were out there on the street giving the culprit a piece of their minds, which he, the ungrateful recipient, looked as though he neither wanted nor knew what use he could put them to.

At this point in time, we had not the faintest idea what it was that had gone down, so naturally we were all of a mind, “Well done, those boys in blue; it’s best you move him on!” The truth of the matter is, however, that this extremely dangerous man, for what else could he be, tried himself three or four times to move by his own volition, but whenever he made to walk away, the coppers were on him again.

Just as they, as a group, drew level with our viewing window, a female member of the establishment’s bar staff came to collect some empty glasses. Someone in our party asked her what the problem was. I think we were all expecting to hear a sorry tale of attempted murder –  after all, it’s fast becoming a national pastime in Britain – but what we got instead was a sorry something else.

“Oh dear!” went the girl, her attitude and countenance struggling to contain the dreadful trauma she had just experienced. “He [the Chinese man in a kilt] was making racist remarks at the bar … saying things about !*!*… When I argued with him, he brought up the subject of !*!*and {here was the real big hit!} He mentioned Tommy Robinson!” At the uttering of Tommy Robinson’s name, she literally, physically shuddered, and I thought for a moment she would fade away like a latter-day Gothic heroine or crumple into insignificance like tomorrow’s and the next day’s and every edition before and after of that mamby-pamby left-wing pamphlet, now on the web, the Guardinistan.

“But he’s not a white bloke, is he?” one of our party asked, presuming by prescription that no one could be accused of racism unless they were unconditionally white.

We all peered out of the window to test the validity of this assertion: it was hard to tell just what the man was, standing there in his Chinese face, looking all Jock-like in his kilt and feverishly eating apples, but what he expressly wasn’t, or had no reason to look like, was a man that was guilty of anything more than not having chosen his pub too carefully.

“Oh yes, he is a white man,” returned the wilting maiden, in an emphatic tone of voice and a horridly fraught expression that clearly suggested he could be no other.

“But you have to admit that his eyes aren’t British and his complexion is …”

She peeped through the window alongside me: “I suppose he must have a suntan.”

What a lucky chap, I thought; he must have been somewhere nice, somewhere other than WokeForkers, as there certainly was a definite dearth of any sunshine here, or anywhere, for that matter, where sunshine is employed symbolically to reflect a happy cultural climate, the likes of which we no longer have in the Disunited Migrant Kingdom.

If the barmaid had expected a commiserative response from us, she would have been sorely disappointed, since we were all too busy trying to fathom why a racist comment, if indeed there had actually been one, and a verbal reference to Tommy Robinson (I always get his name mixed up with a certain lefty actor) justified the deployed resources and exceedingly precious time of not one but a brace of coppers – and they were not even hobby bobbies! – whose only contribution, from what we were able to discern, was a forty-minute ideological lecture.

At length, and quite a long length at that, the taken-to-task white imposter, for so he seemed to us, made his third or fourth attempt to quietly walk away, only to have himself recalled by yet another officer. Had someone mentioned Tommy again? They had brought in reinforcements!

Racists in the UK!

At this juncture, the harangued man was literally at a junction; he was standing on a traffic island in the middle of the road, and as he reserved his legal right not to return to the beckoning copper, Mr Plod-come-lately, who was rather of that group which included PCs Baldy and Beardy, the most pugnacious of the three, marched across the road to him, where the poor man duly received yet another remonstration.

This peculiar – and rational people might say – preposterous police procedural episode persisted for yet another twenty pointless finger-wagging minutes, with the man, who was no doubt ardently wishing he had gone anywhere else in the world but WokeForkers, standing, in every respect, head and shoulders above his inquisitors and responding to their pontifications in a cool, calm, and collected manner, giving, from what we could see, a lot better than what he was getting, as people do when knowing that by being in the right they have natural testimony on their side, finally, having had enough of it and not having lost his temper, as I suppose this is what the coppers wanted, waved his hands in tired conclusion and strode away in his riding-up kilt, his single man’s sack – full of apples – swinging in the breeze, like a man who had clearly won his argument and was off to a decent pub.

Racists in the UK! A man in a kilt, holding a bag of apples is told off by three police officers.
AI-generated image

The irony of the situation, as irony tends to lurk, don’t you think, around virtually every corner in life, like racist men in kilts armed with bags of apples, was that it wasn’t more than ten minutes after this extraordinary piece of theatre, which, according to our collective opinion, was a complete and utter waste of time, that I trekked off to the bar to replenish our party’s glasses.

The young barmaid behind the bar, who was entirely where you’d expect her to be, with a must-have ring thrust through her snout and her hair all dyed in a laughable colour, asked me what I wanted to drink. So far, so good, so proper, but I couldn’t quite make up my mind. WokeForkers sell mighty fine ales, unmatched, unfortunately, by their bar staff, and often one is spoiled for choice, which is sadly and far too commonly not the case with their bar staff.

It just so happened by a quirk of Time that a middle-aged chap had arrived at the bar contiguous with my own arrival, and with me being in full dither, he was given the option to order his beer ahead of me, but he, like me but for different reasons, was also finding the simple task of placing his order difficult due to the row from the TV set, which was showing a BBC broadcast of a gaggle of noisy migrants celebrating the short bus ride from the shores of Dover to a 5-star hotel.

He apologised to the barmaid for not being able to make himself heard: “I’m sorry,” he said, politely, “but some illegal migrants on the telly are talking rather loud.”

The barmaid immediately froze; her jaw shot down several metres like Frank Zappa’s Billy the Mountain’s; her ridiculous blue hair bristled; her face underwent a monstrous change, which wasn’t exactly a bad thing because it wasn’t particularly pleasant even in its ‘normal’ state, but now it appeared all bent and twisted as though savagely infected by a virulent dose of that plague exclusive to the liberal left called ‘outrage’ or was cast in a mask of tormented virtue like Hope not Hate’s at its most hypocritical.

“What did you say?!” she demanded.

I tried to prevent the middle-aged man from reiterating his previous utterance, for, being an expert on leftist ire, the motivation behind the question was all too plain to see: the harridan behind the bar was gunning for confrontation. But the inoffensive middle-aged chap, believing no ill in what he had said, merely repeated what he had said.

Those of you familiar with Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist will have no difficulty, I am sure, in recalling the manner in which Mr Bumble reacted when Oliver asked for more, and had our rancid barmaid been auditioning for Bumble’s part in the soap-operatic drama that she had taken upon herself to direct, I would recommend her before you could say, ‘Does she not know how to smile?’ but I wouldn’t employ her behind a bar for all the inflatable dinghies in France or all the beer at WokeForkers (OK, well even I can make concessions!)

With her hackles raised, which made her hair look dafter, and inconsolably rigid with outrage, she could hardly muster utterance, but when she retrieved her articulation, she suddenly cried out, “Racist! What you’ve said is racist!” and straightaway she was on it, like a chronic dose of the shits, calling loudly along the bar, “We’ve got a racist here!”

Immediately, in response to her wailing, a beanpole excuse for a man sporting a bun on his head, without an arse in his trousers and masquerading as something that was worth the space he occupied, lickety-splitted fast-like from the opposite end of the bar, where no doubt he had been lying in wait to pounce on the first errant customer (who, for public consumption, had to be white) for making racist remarks.

The female Mr Bumble reported her findings to him, and immediately he went from looking absolutely and totally gormless to adopting a posture of high alert, as if he needed his nappies changing and the only one he could trust with this task was wonderless woman the manager – well, lefties are known for their kinks. Not to dwell on that too much, a second racist in one evening had been unmasked at the WokeForkers’ bar! [Dramatic chords of music!]

The manager, female I think, but then I could be wrong, was on the scene like a butcher’s dog, but the amiable white middle-aged man, who was clearly racist because of this fact if not for any other, knowing what they were at, waved his hand contemptuously and with a rewarding complacent smile casually walked away, leaving his three would-be antagonists, all of whom he had made quite clear he wouldn’t touch with yours, which is to say, your resentment and anger, looking perfectly stupid. And one has to raise the question, could they look anything else?

AI-generated image. Female bar staff at WokeForkers pub shocked by racist remarks"
AI-generated image

Left standing alone as I was, the dangling-in-the-wind manager had no one else, only me, to turn to, so rounding on me, it said, as if I really wanted to know, “Like every responsible pub, we adhere to a zero-tolerance policy.” Should I have been impressed? It sounded lame and weary.

I wanted to say it was a pity that we didn’t have a similar policy to stop the boats from flooding in as well as one to prevent the left from ethnically cleansing the white population and its sovereign culture, but I contented myself by thinking these things and tried to suppress a smirk as I said, with remarkable cheerfulness, “And what an effective policy it is to be sure (crikey, I was close to sounding Irish!), but as all I am trying to do is order a pint of beer, perhaps someone would be so kind as to take my order and serve me.” I almost had to shout to be heard as the illegal migrants on the telly were having such a raucous time here in dear old England that it sent a shiver of pride from the nape of my neck to my balls, er of my feet, and elsewhere throughout my body, or something of that persuasion, to acknowledge that I belonged to such a recklessly tolerant nation.

The immediate panic over, and the alarmist barmaid having returned from wherever she had scuttled off to fortify her troubled self with intakes of air and smelling salts, I promptly ordered my pint.

As she pushed the glass against the tap, it was then that she took her Marxist role just a little too far.

“I suppose you’re racist too?” she rasped.

Woke Watch PC UK!

Woke Watch UK!

Now call me old school or even old-fashioned, but in my long and illustrious career of supporting the British pub, I have had the belief instilled in me that barmaids are there to pull your pint, not to pull your chain.

The answer that I was ready to give was manifold, such as “Has your girlfriend left you? Is it the wrong time of the month? Or don’t you know what gender you are?” But I knew that she was goading me, so the compliant answer given was, “Yes, of course I am; I’m a white English male; how could I be anything else but racist? ” But then I went on to correct her, saying that I am not a racist; I am a realist, and that, whilst the words have a similar ring to them, there’s a world of difference between the two, and it is only the left who confuse them because it suits their divisive agenda.

Having failed to elicit the response that she was so keenly after and not knowing what further to do to advance her cunning plan, from then on she shut her trap and did what she was paid to do – poured the pint and took the money.

Racists in the UK! Tips for Barmaids on How to Do Their Job

Now, you may be thinking, and rightly so, that all that I have related is a silly storm in a teacup, and in this you would be right; in itself, it is. But when you collate these issues — a ‘zero tolerance policy’, which works like a one-way street; an almost hysterical urge by giddy-headed girly staff to adopt the role of brain police rather than confine themselves to what they are paid to do, ie take your order and pull your pint; the praises sung of ethnic enrichment, in tones of a drugged-up parrot, when nothing could be further and more nauseatingly far from the truth; and the programmed decrying of racism aimed at native Britons living quietly in their own country, because it is their country and because it is their heritage, and they would like to keep it that way – when all these factors are added together, rollocks! A piece of general advice would be that people that work in pubs should do the job they are paid to do and never stick their oar in. Comprehendi lefties?

Should, dear reader, in spite of the evidence that I have laid before you, an element of doubt yet persist, then ask yourself the following: Did an alleged racist comment by a man in a kilt with a bag of apples standing at WokeForkers’ bar warrant the intervention of not one, not two but three police officers? Did the chap who stood at the bar and wryly referred to the noisy migrants deserve the reaction he received from the neurotically troubled barmaid? And wasn’t it, don’t you think, just a little bit on the impudent side, not to mention provocative, when the lowly underpaid serving wench overstepped her mark by calling me out as racist (not that he gives a f*ck, shouts an inconsiderate heckler) when all I had said and done was order a pint of beer?

A week or so in the aftermath of that evening of entertainment, how dire the weather was for June inserted itself, as weather does in English conversations, during a chat between yours truly and a stranger in a pub, which was not, I hasten to add, WokeForkers’, for you have to be careful, very careful what you say in there!

“Considering how vile the weather has been of late,” said I, “the UK has to be the last country on earth where you’d want to be faced with extortionate fees for gas and electric heating.”

Quickly the man addressed replied that these are not the only things that are wrong with this country today, and discovering from that moment forward that we were mutual travellers not only in kind but also in destination, off we went down the bumpy road on route to collapsing Britain, stopping off on the way at the cultural climate of fear engendered by accusations of racism and what it did for a man called Nowak; the knife-wielding migrant butcher prowling the streets of Belfast; the ethnic-obsessed two-tier cop shop; tragic Southport; indefensible Rochdale; and the saddo younger generation, whom our pied piper politicians are leading up the garden path and tossing over Culture Loss Cliff. We also took a detour to reflect upon the situation of an authoritarian incumbent PM, whom, no matter how many want him out, simply won’t F Off!* Naturally, when we had gotten to where we knew our journey would take us, which was around and around and around in circles, I apprised my fellow traveller about the ‘spot the racist night’, hosted by Wellford’s WokeForkers.

“Civil war,” is coming, he said, solemnly shaking his head. “Everyone you talk to is thinking and saying the same.”

One cannot deny the uneasy feeling that the hands on the doomsday clock identified by Elon Musk are moving inexorably closer to that retributive midnight hour.

Close the curtains, bolt the doors and turn the television on for a counter-intuitive narrative, if that’s the only defence you have against what is lurking out there on the streets, but confront, do not avoid, those disturbing images of the migrant boats as they keep flooding in, and if anyone calls you racist when you speak your mind, remember what terrors silence will bring and wear your antagonists’ failed agenda as you would wear a badge of honour.

How will it all end, you ask? “Good night, sweet prince, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!”

* He’s gone, and the panacea replacing him is ‘Nice to see me being nice’, good old Andy Burnham. What are you going to do about violence on the streets, Andy, the steamrolling immigration problem, and the boats flooding into Dover? Are we ever going to get a PM who is brave enough to grow a pair and save us from extinction, or are our PMs and our much-maligned country forever doomed to be controlled by pseudo-liberal globalists?

PS: If you are planning on getting stabbed in the not-too-distant future, you could do a lot worse and be a lot more stupid by doing it in Manchester, since ‘news just in’ informs us that in selected parts of the city, wall-mounted ‘bleed kits’ are being installed. How reassuring is that! Who needs law and order when you’ve got a political plaster?

‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller, knocking at the moonlit door’

‘No!’ was the answer from Number 10. At least no one here who will or dares to give you the answer you’re looking for.

🎶🎶Things aint what they used to be 🎶🎶

Vote Green for Migrant Detention Centres Near You! – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Life in the UK – it’s all so peculiar – Expat in Kaliningrad, Russia

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Mick Hart's Diaries 1996 notebooks

Mick Hart’s Diary One Day in Travel Trade Publishing

15 May 1996

On recounting some of my experiences of working in the publishing industry, some wag asked, back in the 90s, “So, what are you going to do when you leave school?”

1 March 2026 – Mick Hart’s Diary One Day in Travel Trade Publishing

The following diary extract is taken from my time as managing editor at a now-defunct travel-trade publishing house, which we shall here refer to as Shackelton Press.

Shackelton Press for me represented the last post in a long line of desperately bizarre, tumultuously chaotic, and unbelievably high-octane-stressed advertising-based publishing houses, each one stocked with larger-than-life, weird and wonderful characters.  

Let’s do a bit of time travelling:

These little insights, or snippets of madness, are taken from my 1996 diary. The setting is London. The names of both the publishing house and the actors in it have been changed to protect the reputations of the not-so-innocent. If you know who you are, God bless you. I trust that you all came through the experience mentally and emotionally unscathed. They were, as John Lennon lyricised, “Strange days, indeed!”

Cast of Characters:
Editorial Director: Byron Quill (Quilly)

Managing Editor: Mick Hart (or, ‘managing badly’, as Sebastian used to say, or ‘managing just’, as Mr Ormolu was wont to quip)

Production Department Staff
Sebastian Forrester (subeditor/researcher/writer – part-time actor)

Margaret Clark: (researcher/subeditor)

Matt Ormolu: (editor)

Grant: (graphic design and page layout)

Arthur: (freelance editor – South African) nickname ‘Slice’

Suit & Tie: (researcher/subeditor) – female

Publishing house: Shackleton Press

########################################


Is it the same today? In my days, people were always leaving publishing house editorial/production departments, either because they couldn’t stand the pace any longer and wanted to get their life back or were, or so they said, moving on to richer pastures. Such is the land we occupy, known as Wishful Thinking.

On this day, Friday 15 May 1996, someone – yet another someone – was about to make the great escape. She was a northern lass, who we will refer to here as Margaret Clark.

In connection with this event, I had been directed by my director (after all, that’s what directors are for, directing) to sally forth, in my own time, of course, or manage someone else to do the same (that’s what managing is all about, delegating) in the interests of procuring for the aforesaid Margaret a communal card and leaving present.

To avoid the boredom of it, I delegated the role to the one chap in our department whom I knew would turn a routine task into something more diverting. No one was better suited to this task, I thought, than Sebastian Forrester, the irascible budding actor, whose aspirations of high culture and whose self-regard for sophistication presented numerous opportunities whilst preparing for the lunchtime trip to, how do we say it, ‘take the piss’.

Friday 15 May 1996 – as it happened

Sebastian, who was extremely excited by the responsibility conferred on him, entertained, with my help, the whole department. He set up his affectatious cultural airs as if they were skittles and my debasing of them the balls that would knock them down.

Margaret Clark, the girl who was leaving today, reminded me of a stick of rock; she had ‘Northern Girl’ stamped right through her. As such, she would most likely have been happy with a pair of clogs, a flat hat and a bowl of mushy peas, heavy on the mint sauce, for a leaving present, but Sebastian, true to form, had his mind set on something she would like because it was something he would like. He seriously had no idea if she had any interest in, or appreciation of, art, and neither did I. But once Sebastian had latched onto something, it was like a dog’s teeth in arse. (This analogy has some baring, sorry, bearing, on the eventual choice of gift, or, of course, I would not have employed it.)

So, we were off to Covent Garden to buy Margaret, who was leaving, a book on art that she might not want, would not like and would never read. It sounded to me like the perfect present for a person quitting a job that she did not want, did not like and was pleased to close the covers on.

Sebastian, just before we left the office, was commenting vociferously on the remarks of one of his colleagues, whose projected view on everything he considered rather crass: “Oh yes, Michael, there’s old Ormolu, his usual helpful and refined self, ‘I think some novelty items are in order, Sebastian,’ he said. Novelty items, indeed. And we all know what he means by that!”

What Sebastian did not know was that Matt Ormolu and I had already discussed the type of present that we were going to buy dear Margaret, and novelty items were top of the list.

Mick Hart's Diary 15 May 1996

“Oh no, Michael!” protested Sebastian, his nose curling and sensibilities clearly offended. “I’m not under any circumstances going into Nutz Novelty shop!”

“Sebastian I barked (Sebastian was the son of an army officer, and sons of army officers, I have found, respond instinctively to the old sergeant major treatment). “Sebastian!”

“Yes, Michael!”

“We are going in!”

“Right, Michael!”

“Oh my God!” That was Sebastian, genuinely shocked by the risqué greeting cards greeting him in Nutz Novelty.

Naturally, being a thespian by aspiration, buying anything of such a crass, crude nature was theatrically beneath him.

Officially, we only had our lunch hour in which to buy a present, and the clock was ticking. In Nutz Novelty, the hands and the pendulum bore an intended resemblance to male genitalia.

“Pity we can’t afford that,” I thought.

Sebastian’s dithering was impinging upon our schedule, so I had to make a managerial decision. So, much to his dismay, I grabbed the nearest greeting card. On its cover was a naked man, who was looking rather gay. Then, before Sebastian could faint, I added to my basket a jumping clockwork bum and a packet of luminous condoms.They were always experiencing power cuts up North, so Margaret should find some practical use for them.

Sebastian was so appalled that, in the interests of balance and resuscitation, I accepted his need to restore the culture he’d lost by looking for it in Dillons bookshop.

In Dillons, we haggle over two potential publications: Works of Art of the Past Century or 100 Years of Playboy. I’ll leave you to decide which one of us advocated which book.

To placate Sebastian, Works of Art of the Past Century it is. A good manager always manages to make concessions when they are faced with a member of staff who looks as though he’s about to stage a tantrum.

With the esteemed book in his mitt, Sebastian proceeds to checkout, putting the book on one side of the counter and resting the Nutz Novelty nude-man card on the other.

The shop assistant rings up the book and then, glancing at the gay card, with its picture of a compromised nude man on the front, asks Sebastian, “Is this yours?”

Sebastian panicking, “Good heavens, no! He bought it from Nutz Novelty!”

But ‘he’, meaning me, was nowhere to be found. I had expeditiously removed myself and was studiously and demonstratively preoccupied with Post-modernist Works of Art.

“We sell them here,” the assistant said, referring to the card.

“Do you!” exclaimed Sebastian. “Well, I’m shocked!”

Mick Hart’s Diary One Day in Travel Trade Publishing

We were already late back from lunch, two hours late to be exact.

“It wil be a ground-to-air arse-seeking boot for us, Mr Hart!” was Sebastian’s prediction.

We were rattling along on the tube, with Sebastian imitating what he expected Director Quill to say about our lengthy expedition,” Huh! Did it take two of you!”

“To which the reply will be, Sebastian: ‘Yes, one to go into the arty-farty shop and one to buy the bouncing bum.’”

Mr Quilly never commented on our combined late return, but he did say, “I can’t have my managing editor buying condoms, bouncing bums and false breasts in Nutz Novelty Shop.”

“I’m sorry, Mr Q.” I contritely replied. “It won’t happen again.”

Leaving his office, I thought, “Where did he get the false breasts from?”

As I approached the editorial department, I could hear actor Sebastian hamming it up in no uncertain terms: “… and whilst I was in Dillons looking for a decent present, there’s old Mick,” I could hear him sneering, “dithering about in Nutz Novelty shop, undecided about whether he should buy the fart spray or the masturbatory glove?”

“False breasts? Masturbatory glove?” Perhaps Quill and Sebastian were more frequent visitors to Nutz Novelty than we gave them credit for. Perhaps they are given credit? Perhaps they had a joint account!

When I entered the department, I was greeted with: “We thought you were never going to come back. It’s 5pm!”

“Sebastian’s fault,” I replied. “He’s such an old woman when it comes to buying presents.”

No fear of reprisals for that comparison. The one thing I never did was employ feminists.

Mick Hart’s Diary One Day in Travel Trade Publishing

We were late back, so late that we barely had time to wrap the presents and get the card with the bare gay man on the front signed.

South African Arthur, regarding the nude picture on the front of the card, asked: “Why is there a picture of Quilly on the front? More to the point, who took it?”

Grant, from the production department, asked, referring to the photo, “Is this a still out of Sebastian’s latest film?”

After everyone in the production department had signed the card, I ferried it, with half the department behind me, to Mr Quilly’s office. Through the window in the door, we can see him smiling as he signs the card.

Matt Ormolu: “Quilly’s smiling. Perhaps people should leave more often.”

Even Mr Quilly himself had a comment to make: “I’ll have to be more careful about who photographs me as I’m scrubbing my right knee!”

It was almost time to leave for the leaving party, which was taking place at a venue in the Angel. There was an air of school days’ excitement in the office. We were going to be really naughty and leave fifteen minutes early. Even old Suit and Tie, one of the female editorial staff, was coming with us tonight. She usually went straight home to darn her socks or something.

Outside on the street, most of those people accompanying me waited patiently for a cab; all, that is, but Sebastian.

“Typical Harty situation,” he scoffed, referring to me, and then directed at me: “Haven’t you heard of that simple and convenient mode of transport known as the tube?”

“Indeed I have, Sebastian, but you being an actor and all, I wouldn’t dream of casting you in the role of a commoner. Besides, on the tube you’d most likely be deprived of a speaking part, whereas in the cab your oratory will be rewarded with a standing ovation.”

“You’d have a job standing …” but his derision was cut short by our chariot arriving.

The cab got us to where we wanted to be, door to door, in half the time it would have taken by tube.

“I know, Sebastian, there is no need to congratulate me. We are here much quicker than if we had taken the tube; that’s why I’m the manager, here to manage.”

Sebastian’s book, A 100 Years of Art, came in handy. Margaret used it as a platform for the jumping bum, and everyone, except for Sebastian, was enraptured by it. “Good choice, Sebastian,” Ormolu glowed – and so did the condoms.

Whilst Ormolu and the condoms glowed, Sebastian glowered; he was leaning in close – too close, I thought – to two of the female editors for which he had a lascivious liking, chastising me for all he was worth: “You should have seen him, old Hart, standing there in Nutz Novelty, unable to make up his mind whether to buy the fart spray or the masturbatory glove!”

I steered clear of this conversation but wondered how Sebastian would deal with certain questions the female staff now were putting to him regarding the glove to which he had alluded, of which, like Quilly’s female breasts, I had not the slightest knowledge.

All things considered, the party went well, which was something of a letdown by publishing standards. Nobody got paralytic and disgraced themselves by fondling bottoms, except for the clockwork one, or by slagging off the production director to his face; nobody threw up, got into a fight or bonked one another in the gentlemen’s lavs and the stench of Ganja was conspicuously absent. It all could have been so very different, if I had only invited the sales staff.

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Dear Diary … 2025 – that was the year that was / How to grow old graciously

2025 that was the year that was

2025 that was the year that was: UK and Kaliningrad

Mick Hart’s 2025: a nostalgic review in photographs

30 January 2026 – 2025 that was the year that was: UK and Kaliningrad

As the photographs immediately below illustrate, Kaliningrad has been and is experiencing a real winter this year. Snow fell on cue, a week or so before the New Year celebrations, and its festive debut at this time was very much appreciated. Three weeks into the New Year, however, and like that ‘long time, no see’ distant relative, who, out of the goodness of your foolish heart, you invited to stay for the Yuletide season, snow, ice and formidable temperatures hovering somewhere between minus ten and minus 14 are beginning to overstay their welcome.

With spring and summer still out of sight, one way of looking forward to more hospitable climes is to look backwards. Hiding in the house is, I think, a lot less disagreeable than struggling into heavy boots, thermal coats, hats and gloves and braving the great outdoors. If I wanted to be a snowman, I would never defrost my heart. Moreover, shutting the door on the outside world provides the excuse and opportunity for stepping inside your computer and doing a bit of digital spring cleaning ahead of the leaves and buds returning to the trees.

I don’t know about you, although I’ve heard what others say, but both my smartarse phone and laptop are like pictures at an exhibition after a hurricane has gatecrashed.

In days of old our forebears seemed to have been smitten by the optical difficulty in seeing the wood for the trees; today, in snappy la-la land, the wood has become the photograph and the trees a forest of images forever growing more expansive across the finite landscape of digital storage.

Like you, I can think of better things to do whilst whiling away my time indoors, but computers and digital storage systems, like overburdened, unkempt woodland, need to be attended to, lovingly tidied up and judiciously pruned back.

The estate managers among you will appreciate what I say, when I do say that there’s a lot to be said for ridding oneself of dead wood (not to mention fallen trees), for rolling up one’s sleeves and trousers, and with knotted hanky on your head in lieu of the summer to come, buckling down to some good old-fashioned lopping, chopping and admin work.

In practising what I preach, whilst waiting for the snow to melt, I have sifted, sorted, catalogued, carefully reassigned and refiled chronologically a prodigious number of scattered images; a making-me-smug endeavour, enabling me to extrapolate those which feature in this post; images which, in my opinion, open a retrospective window on the nature of my personal world in 2025.

Kaliningrad Upper Pond frozen over
Kaliningrad, January 2025

2025 that was the year that was: UK and Kaliningrad

As you can see, January 2025 in Kaliningrad was not much different than January 2026, except that in 2026 the temperatures have been hovering around minus 8 degrees and minus 14 degrees. It was not quite that cold back in 2025. At least not cold enough to prevent one from indulging in the fully explainable practice of falling backwards into the snow. Something for you to try sometime. And no, that’s not me dressed as a woman.

Olga Hart enjoys laying in teh snow

As spring approached in 2025, we took the opportunity to indulge our philosophical/mythological side by visiting Ponart Brewery’s Creation of the World Exhibition, after which, with no excuse intended, we side-stepped into the Art Depot Bar , which is part and parcel of the Ponart Brewery complex. Here, you can enjoy the historical ambience of one of the brewery’s original beer cellars and have your beer delivered to you in the trucks of a model train.

Back in the UK, my Gothic alter image was inspired by a susceptible reaction to the living and studying conditions in which, I am grateful to say, I entrancingly immersed myself:

Mick Hart in the 19th century

“Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore …” – Edgar Allan Poe

Such volumes of ‘forgotten lore’ were indeed forthcoming, complete with ink inscriptions, naming the person or persons to whom each book belonged, those who had lived out their mortal sentence in the early 20th, late 19th and even 18th centuries.

It was still officially or unofficially winter, and though not so excessively cold that it could hold a candle to Kaliningrad’s temperatures, the UK’s outrageously high utility costs made, and continue to make, candle-burning the second option to staying in bed until spring – which is not that far away; just a couple of paragraphs down.

A Victorian living room in 2026

The only way to keep warm in Britain in these troubled times is to rail at those wrongly elected who have all but destroyed our homeland, some by incompetence, some by design, but all by disavowal of the suicidal part they have played in orchestrating the migrant invasion.

Into spring we go, where it’s time once again to dust off one’s antiques. In the early 20th century, a celebrated chat-up line, at least on the stage of the music hall, was, “Would you like to come home and see my etchings?” but in the twilight years of one’s spent youth, or in my case misspent youth, “Would you like to come home and help me to polish my antiques?” seems somehow more appropriate, if admittedly rather tawdry when paired with the grace of early spring.

With the buds returning to the trees and it being warm enough to escape the inclement weather of one’s sparsely heated house, it was away we went to conduct business of a sort that I wont bore you with, stopping off on one’s return at the atmospheric Brampton Mill.

At the curiously named ‘The Hill’, a public house in Wollaston, where they serve, I don’t mind saying, a fine and revolving array of ales, the night scene outside the pub was hauntingly English Gothic. Yet, nearby Rushden by night is infinitely more unnerving; come to think of it, not only by night. Take a drive down Rushden High Street (prudently with your doors and windows locked!) and let me know what you think. The theme of Gothicism and antiques persisted as long as spring existed and followed us into the warmth of summer.


Summer (Ah, sun and warmth – sometimes …) saw us set sail in 2025 on a monumental, intriguing and adventurous voyage of discovery to Cornwall and North Devon, calling on the way, and whilst we tarried there, at, among other places, Tintagel, Port Isaac (Portwenn of Doc Martin fame), Boscastle, Padstow, and, following in the footsteps of her much-devoted fans, the Agatha Christie trail; taking in the Art Deco and earlier historic wonders of Burgh Island and then onto Christie’s adored 18th-century summer home, the reclusive-seclusive Greenway House.

2025 that was the year that was: UK and Kaliningrad

Summer in Kaliningrad found me undertaking grossly inadvisable experiments of a selfie kind, as seen here in the photo, which was snapped out front of Kaliningrad’s vast and intricate Baroque fantasy, the multiple entertainment and bar complex, Residence of Kings. Like the historic Blue Anchor in London’s Southwark, bars sufficient there are inside this gargantuan establishment not to venture outside if a ‘pub crawl’ is what you’re after.

On a return trip to the Art Depot Bar (Ponart Brewery), Olga and I went bananas. Let me rephrase that: on this occasion, she elected to join me. We also did a spot of amber dredging along the Baltic beach and shabby-chiced the entrance hall to arty-fart the dacha. Later, we solicited the assistance of real artists to illustrate the outside paint job.

Arguably the best month of the year for me – the glorious and sadly soft transition from extraversion to mellow introspectiveness. Having said that, the famous Königsberg monument depicted below, as captured in September, is not bull-orientated, so you haven’t discovered a worthy joke there. Neither will it assist you should your first name be Bill and your last name Cody. The famous bronze creatures locking horns on Prospekt Mira, opposite the Regional Scientific Library, are, in fact, Bisons, sculpted by August Gaul in 1910 and valued as well as intrinsically for having survived the city’s destruction at the close of World War II.

The chap standing there with an anchor in his hand and pointing at me as if he is trying to tell me something is, as if you didn’t know, the one and only Peter the Great.

Mick ‘the very rarely even close to great’ polishes his tree-hugging skills, which he does in one of the photographs here, to a very grateful tree, which has very little else to do but stand the test of time on a hilltop deep in the North Beds countryside. Staying with the Bedford theme, there’s also a picture above of the state-of-the-art Gothic revivalist De Parry’s Avenue D’Parry’s hotel, framed within the gathering hues of autumn’s transitionary season.

Coincident with the autumn school term, when, presumably, there would be less family convergence on Poland’s Sopot resort, we stole away for a five-day break. This was my second visit to Sopot, in which I discovered architectural gems Art Nouveau in nature and, wouldn’t you just know it, gems of a different but not indifferent kind to a man of my discernment: ‘Bar, Bar, Black Sheep’.  For some people it was sea and sand, and how does that expression go, ‘like a kid in a sweet shop’.

This time of year also found Mick Hart giving an impromptu address to Kaliningrad’s lucky ProSchool students.

Late November ushers in, with a defining sublimity that never grows old, the dying shades of verdure, taking a last, impressive bow before, come the final encore, they leave the seasonal stage, handing over the act to winter. There are more deep, dense, poetically invocative and graduated praiseworthy colours in a typical autumnal scene than you and I could shake a stick at, and as November plays itself out, less on high upon the sticks than are woven at ground level into a semblant natural Axminster, the wonderful reams of golden yellows, astonishments of auburns and the artists’ palettes of burnished browns waft us gently away on a seasonal magic carpet into the swan-song realm of Christmas and its boisterous prelude to the end of the year.

Olga Hart autumnal collage

What goes around comes around, and here we are, back again in winter.

Kaliningrad’s Svetlogorsk, its premiere Baltic resort, which, in summer, is a hubble bubble of touristic jostling bustle, with streets teeming, beaches embattled and popular bars and restaurants bursting at the seams, is, in the earliest throes of winter, an altogether different, essentially meaning quieter, place; for, as many of you likely know, out-of-season resorts, when experienced as a solitary cloud might enjoy its singular company, are like the recuperative restoration, the danger past in the aftermath, that follows in the wake of a raging distemper akin to flu.

Svetlogorsk resort in the winter months

Thank Heaven! the crisis
The danger is past,

And the lingering illness
Is over at last
And the fever called “Living”
 Is conquered at last – Edgar Allan Poe

Aw, come on, Edgar, old mate, I’m with you totally on this kind of sentiment in its relation to mortal existence, but it’s a bit strong in this context, isn’t it!

Excuse him, if you will; he’s rather given over, you know, to lifelong fits of self-indulgence in the addictive vagaries of bleak melancholia. Let’s merely fall back on words and phrases that do to seasides out of season no conventional harm, such as ‘deserted’, ‘quiet’ and ‘reflectively peaceful’.

Mick Harts Diary 1971

One thing that covers all seasons, and has been for me for the past 54 years, is the daily writing of a diary. Not content, however, by exhausting the present with thoughts of the past, in 2025, I stepped up the arduous process of scanning in, and thus digitally converting, 40 years of handwritten copy. Bless him, that’s what I say! It keeps him out of mischief – “And not before time!” say those who know him!

Copyright © 2018-2026 Mick Hart. All rights reserved.

Image attribution⬇️

Hello Spring: <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/fancy-lines-dots-hello-spring-lettering_6992212.htm#fromView=search&page=1&position=16&uuid=42aab2a9-9c0f-4fa6-83d7-c57dc3e4d659&query=spring+antique+typographic+image”>Image by freepik</a>

Hello Summer: <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/summer-background-design_1084447.htm#fromView=search&page=1&position=42&uuid=e75660f9-e7ca-4ad9-b222-fcc3664d6f3d&query=Hello+Summer+antique+typographic+image”>Image by mariia_fr on Freepik</a>

Hello Autumn: <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/elegant-hello-autumn-lettering-composition_2659814.htm#fromView=search&page=1&position=16&uuid=781c1b5d-05f1-46f2-8e85-c0dbe722dc9d&query=Autumn+antique+typographic+image”>Image by freepik</a>

Hello Winter: <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/free-vector/hello-winter-lettering-with-leaves_10612573.htm#fromView=search&page=1&position=39&uuid=056e05c8-7285-4de1-b3c5-3cdbeaee5a94&query=Hello+winter+antique+typography”>Image by freepik</a>

Book with glasses: <a href=”https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/top-view-book-flower-glasses_4881633.htm”>Image by freepik</a>