The establishment The act of going to the pub has necessitated varying levels of subterfuge over the centuries, and drinking establishments have consequently dispensed a fair number of euphemisms along with their pints. Among the nicknames for one of the few places that, alongside the church, is open to all, are fuddle-caps hall and tippling booth

a bobby (another nickname, based on the name of Sir Robert Peel, the nineteenth-century Home Secretary who created the Metropolitan Police)

These are the racers, who revel in steep climbs and who can be seen sucking vigorously on their energy gel to make them faster, better, stronger.

Jean-Marie Le Pen: a ball that goes too far to the right.

brain on a chain: an RAF police dog, with the implication that they are more intelligent than their handlers. god-botherer: the chaplain. Otherwise known as the sky pilot.

her exposé of the hidden rules of social behaviour, Watching the English, Kate Fox examines the social rules that are particular to all drinking places.

The trouble with words is you never know whose mouth they’ve been in. Dennis Potter

battery acid: coffee.

Sub-genres of SF include new weird (urban fantastical, including monsters) and alt history (alternative history, where the fiction imagines that a certain point in history has been changed);