The Film : Sherlock Holmes

The Bray Review : I had previously hated everything Guy Ritchie had done; Lock Stock, Snatch, Madonna… Finally he has made a decent film.

It won’t have escaped your attention that it’s been fairly quiet from both of us here at Linkage Towers. For this we apologise and hope that you are able to continue with your lives without too much grief, sorrow and sadness.

Mr Trench’s absence is easy to explain: he recently took delivery of 7 boxed sets of the excellent 80’s hair-fest MacGyver. His plan was to watch all 139 episodes, plus two movies, then try to recreate each one using a home video camera, a basic explosives set and a remote control helicopter. I assume he’s now onto the second phase of his plan because only yesterday I saw Mr Trench dive across the bonnet of our Rolls Royce Phantom Drophead before it exploded in a ball of flame.

My own absence is far less exciting, mostly because, at this moment in time, I can’t tell you much about it. All I can say is that I am working on something which we shall call Project X. Imaginative. Ooh, Project X, the name simply oozes mystery and intrigue. However, Project X also requires a fair amount of work and effort, hence why I haven’t posted too much recently.

I’ve been working on various facets of Project X for a while but soon there shall be a certain development and I will be able to reveal all about this most mysterious of projects. It is good though, and very worthwhile, and should provide some small amusement to you all, but for now you’ll have to wait. Expect a major update, and the reveal of Project X, on or around February 14th.

In the meantime, hang tight. Mr Trench is looking for budding actors and actresses to take part on his MacGyver shows, so if you’re interested, pop round and let him know. He’s only after attractive young ladies though, and please be aware that there may be some close physical contact required.

I think that I can state the two facts below with confidence that they are both true for 99.9% of people living on the planet:

1. Everybody likes The Muppets.
2. Everybody likes Queen (the band, not the Monarch)

So when The Muppets and Queen are combined, what is the result? This majestic piece of brilliance, all wrapped up with a big shiny red bow.

Do you feel warm and fuzzy on the inside? Good, good.

Before I start, I’d like to point out that the observation made within this post was made solely by The Finnhed, not myself. If you have any complaints or issues, direct them to her, I am merely impartially relaying the information.

It’s not often that the worlds of D-List celebrity and childrens television are combined, but recently The Finnhed made a very astute observation that achieved this very goal. Such was it’s brilliance, I was prepared to let it appear on Linkage, even though it involves… Big Brother. I know, I’m sorry, but go along with it.

Apparently, there is a ‘celebrity’ holed up in the Celebrity Big Brother house called Alex Reid. He goes out with Jordan and is a kickboxer or cagefighter or something like that. There, that’s the Big Brother bit out of the way.

Those of you who are of a particular age may well remember Art Attack, with Neil Buchanan. On Art Attack, for some reason, there was ‘The Head’, which was a puppet of a sculpted head. I forget what his purpose was but I remember he had a northern accent and laughed a lot.

In a flash of inspiration, the insane, slightly manic genius of The Finnhed realised that this Alex Reid of Big Brother/Jordan fame and the Art Attack Head look the same. Observe.

I have to say, I agree with The Finnhed. Partly because there is a likeness there that can’t be denied, but mostly because she’s holding me hostage and won’t feed me this weeks meal of minced rat’s liver until I concur with her.

Send help!

The alarm bells are probably already ringing in your minds. “He’s used the word ‘cucible’, this is going to be about toilets isn’t it?” Well you’re right, this is all about toilets, and what can happen upon toilets, so if you’re eating chocolate mousse or something then I suggest you stop reading now.

At work the other day, I felt the urge to make use of the lavatorial facilities, more specifically the cubicle-based ones. I attended the cucible and did what everyone on the planet does but doesn’t like to talk about. Then, near the end of my sojourn to the bog, something bad happened. Really bad.

In a gent’s loo, there are rules, certain etiquette to be followed. No eye contact, no speaking aside from a mumbled ‘alright’, no selecting the urinal next to another chap if there is a vacant one further away, that sort of thing. I fear my fumbling ineptness created a new rule and then immediately broke it.

Read the rest of ‘Unwelcome cubicle gift’

Now come on, which one of you lovely readers has sent me a parcel? Own up, don’t be shy now, I know that a parcel awaits me because I’ve been sent an e-mail telling me so. To prove that I am not one of the dirty liars, I’ll paste the text of the e-mail below…

Subject: DHL Express Services. You need to get a parcel NR.5748

Body: Dear customer!

The courier company who I works for was not able to deliver your parcel by your address or house/aparttment.
Cause: Error in shipping address.

You may pickup the parcel at our post office personaly.

Please attention!
The shipping lable is attashed to this electronic mail as an attach.
Print this lable to get this package at our post office. The parcel may be important, for your works or a valentines Gift!

Please do not reply to this e-mail, it is an unmonitored mailbox!

Thank you,
DHL Global ForwardiNG Services.

See? Proof indeed that a delightful treat awaits me at the post office. Unfortunately, the thoughtful reader who sent me the parcel got the shipping address wrong! Oh you silly billy, did you spell “Randomlinkage Towers, Britain” incorrectly? Never mind, at least the excellent DHL Global ForwardiNG Services somehow discovered my e-mail to let me know, otherwise the package may have been lost forever.

They are good though, DHL Global ForwardiNG Services. Even though they clearly struggled to locate my house/aparttment, they manage to keep up their levels of professionalism by greeting me with a jolly, practically jubilant ‘Dear customer!’. Ah, how ecstatic they are that they’ve tracked me down, they just don’t want my parcel to be returned to sender!

But what’s this? Oh no, tragedy strikes! Even though they claim to have attashed a lable to the electronic mail as an attach, I can’t find one! They’ve forgotten the attachment, leaving me with no lable to print out to take to the post office personaly. This grieves me deeply readers, knowing that my parcel, maybe for my works or perhaps even a really, really early valentines gift, could be languishing somewhere in the DHL Global ForwardiNG Services warehouse, gathering dust and gradually decaying. What if the parcel contains perishable goods, such as a cake, some Freddos, or the Willy Holloughbys?

To make the situation even more bleak is my inability to contact the DHL Global ForwardiNG Services people, because their e-mail is sent from an unmonitored mailbox. Sorry, an unmonitored mailbox! My despair deepens every minute, knowing that a thoughtful gift for me remains undelivered and lost.

If you are a member of this most fabled Global ForwardiNG Services team, I implore you to send me the correct lable as an attach so that I can print it out to get the package at your post office, your post office which up until previously I had no idea even existed.

I shall surely not sleep until I have the parcel in my hands and I am safely at my home/aparttment. I will be updating this page with any breaking parcel news, just in case insomnia strikes any of you who feel a deep concern for the safety and welfare of my seemingly unreachable parcel. I need you to be strong readers, not only for myself but for each other.

Be strong. We’ll make it.

It can’t have escaped your attention that some form of weather-based apocalypse or Ragnorok is very much upon us. The skies have fallen grey and soulless, the ground is a hardened lifeless mass and the sale of woolen garments has increased moderately. Fortunately things seem to have taken a turn for the better in the last couple of days with the bitter snow being replaced with terrifying, frictionless ice. Ice which waits patiently before forcing the unwary pedestrian or motorist to soil the very garments they so dearly need for warmth. The good kind of warmth, provided by layers of trapped air, not the brief kind created by rapidly escaping bodily effluent.

Thankfully the couple in our latest (stolen) video have their wits about them. Observe:

Phew. So it seems that at least two of us aren’t losing their heads. Observe the sensible precautions our dynamic duo take to ensure safety:

1. They act rapidly. Whilst those who are slow of brain might have waited, this pair spring into action after just 10 seconds of moderately out-of-control terror.
2. They are synchronised. With uncanny timing they both simultaneously recognise what their only possible hope for survival is .
3. They leap with majestic grace. Having identified their vehicle as a certain deathtrap, they exit stage right and left. At 10mph any car becomes a whirling dervish of chaos. It’s seatbealts? Tools of strangulation. Airbags? Suffocating masses of material. Interior fixings including cupholders? A seething vista of point jabby things.
4. They exit in opposite directions. To the unobserved eye, they have doubled the chances of one of them getting run over. Consider this; upon their departure the car is momentarily confused, giving them the time they need to make their escape. After sliding some miles to minimum safe distance, they rendezvous days later at a predetermined safehouse. Who’s laughing now?

I expect to see this kind of behaviour in the Highway Code within a few months.

Aah, television, even though you will undoubtedly make my eyes square and shrivel my dangly bits, I still watch you and laugh with you and cry with you.

But more recently, you’ve been making me cross, ever-so-cross. Those pesky programme makers have started to include something in their shows, something that annoys me and causes me to hold my head in despair and wail like a banshee. This particular something appears more specifically on modern quiz shows and reality television. But to what do I refer?

The attempt to build tension by the use of prolonged silence or advert breaks.

Two different means to an end, but the goal is the same; make the viewers all tense and excited.

Read the rest of ‘The tension’s too fake to mention’

Monkeys.

Chocolate.

Two very distinct things there, but the infamous Weebl and Bob have developed a successful combination of the two that they’ve presented to the dangerous Dragons of Dragon’s Den.

Observe this lost episode of Dragon’s Den here, where we see the real attitude of some of the Dragons to the brave ‘entrepeneurs’.

The clip below is funny. Very funny. There can be no argument, no question about it. Watch it and laugh.

See? Always trust your Uncle Penge!

Hooray, we’re back, joy unto the world, it’s a brand new decade. First things first, we shall round up the whole Christmas/New Year fiasco with this final festive post. Yes, it’s the third and final part of our series of posts about Christmas crackers.

You know the story by now; Mr Trench posted his musings on the somewhat bizarre cracker toy he received, which was a small plastic lobster. The Feisty Kim then had her works party and was rewarded with a similar, potentially even crapper, small plastic lobster from her cracker.

This left only myself to reveal what the Cracker Gods had blessed me with. I had my work Christmas do at some point in December, I forget when, it was cold and damp, and I was granted the very great honour of a small plastic novelty. Ladies and Gentlemen and small plastic lobsters, without further ado, I give you my prize…

*stares*

Read the rest of ‘Ho-ho-oh… Part 3′

*some muzak plays*

Hello. Trench and Penge are absent at the moment. In this post-Christmas lull, they’ve decided to have a little break to recharge their woefully drained comedy batteries.

Trench and Penge will return in the New Year, and you can be confident that in a brand new year, in a brand new decade, they’ll still be churning out the same old toss that they always have. In an ever-changing world, it’s good to know that the content of Randomlinkage will be as inane, rambling and bobbins as it always has been, and always will be.

Take care now.

*muzak continues, fading into the distance…*

*penge and trench sit at either end of an enormous, long table in an otherwise empty hall. along the entire length of the table is a copious amount of food and drink*

Hello readers, it’s Christmas Day. As you can see, myself and Mr Trench are already tucking into the feast.

*mr trench pulls a party popper. it pops. mr trench puts down the now redundant party popper*

I know what some of you are thinking. “Feasting? At 10am? Why so early?” Well readers, myself and Mr Trench are eating and drinking to cheer ourselves up, for we are full of Christmas woe. We wrote our letters to Santa Claus and, yet again, he failed to bring us anything. We’ve had a special sleigh landing strip built in the garden, purchased 1000 of the finest mince pies for the jolly fat man to eat and even hired a lady reindeer to entertain Santa’s able sleigh-pullers whilst he was absent for a few moments, but alas, he did not arrive.

*mr trench sobs into his eggnog*

As you can see, we are both very distressed. It’s not like we asked for much from old Santa either, just a few little essentials. Here, peruse our lists to old Clausmeister:

Mr Penge would like:

• A troupe of angry llamas to terrorise the locals with.
• A years supply of Freddos (35 Freddos per day x 365 days of the year = 12,775 Freddos)
• The return of Unicorns.
• A new biro.

Mr Trench would like:

• A pirate ship, complete with bloodthirsty band of pirates, to set sail on the seven seas and become the scourge of the trading world.
• Pamela Anderson circa 1997.
• X-Ray vision.
• A comfy pair of slippers (preferably pink or lilac).

I’m sure you’ll agree that our demands are far from unattainable, yet Santa appears to have overlooked us. Again. The staff at the Towers performed admirably, constructing a 30ft high golden statue of both myself and Mr Trench cavorting in the snow. They also used 6 months of their wages to purchase a ‘violence free day’, where neither myself nor Mr Trench can beat our staff for an entire 24 hours. Just one of the luxuries of working for such benevolent masters.

So to drown our sorrows, we are to sit, eat, drink and be generally unmerry. If the alcohol flows freely we may wear some thin paper hats, but this is an unlikely circumstance. We’ve had a special cracker made, inside which we’ve concealed an old fashioned mediaeval fool, who will juggle and play the lute and suchlike, but unfortunately we sealed him inside the cracker in November and forgot about him. Thinking about it, the cracker does seem somewhat whiffy now.

But forget us, readers. Forget our bleak, present-less Christmas and the misery and sorrow we feel. We’ll be ok, we shall eat and drink until we pass out and then the whole terrible Christmas charade will be over and we can get on with our lives.

Do not let our misfortune bring you down. Go on, enjoy yourselves. From Randomlinkage Towers, both Mr Trench and myself wish you a very merry Christmas.

Xmas tv is, as we all know, almost universally rubbish. Aside from two or so Christmas specials of note, and some insane re-imagining of an Attack of the Killer Plants story, you’d be better off on Xbox Live, cup of tea in hand.

If you are one of ‘the womens’ things are fractionally better because at Chrimbo the Beeb show the Olympia Horse Show. For some reason, non-men find the whole affair positively thrilling, whilst blokey-blokes sort of stare, bewildered.

The horse show is made tolerable by two events:

1. The Shetland Pony Grand National – In which ponies of the miniature Shetland variety struggle to carry slightly-too-heavy-to-be-comfortable children at speed over tiny fences. It’s a mockery of all things natural-sized and quite enough to make you think someones popped some of those mushrooms in your brew again.
2. The Dog Agility stakes – Whereby man and dog, synchronised into perfect harmony over countless hours of practice, launch forth on a blindingly quick, yet accurate, run over a canine assault course. Only for the dog to bugger it all up and just run off because someone in the audience was clapping too loudly. Haha, brilliant.

This year however there was a third, altogether unexpected highlight. Now, all the events at Olympia are held in a single, massive arena. In between different events, a team of stagehands dash on, replace and rearrange all the obstacles in line with the next round, then leg it off. Without this intervention, Shetland ponies would be forced to scale mammoth 6ft tall fences with terrified children lashed to their back, whilst tall thoroughbreds would be somewhat mystified at set of doggy weave-poles before almost certainly kicking them into the astonished crowds faces.

Thankfully, or not depending on your sensibilities, the team are ready and able to modify the arena in doublequick time. Thanks in part to the curious sight of a man driving a tractor wearing… a tuxedo.

Tractor. Tuxedo.

A sport so upper-class, that even the tractor-driver has to wear a tuxedo.

This raises the important question, is the tractor-man:

• A working-class man forced to wear a tux against his will.
• An upper-class gent, manhandled into the drivers seat. (Possibly as punishment for some heinous crime, like serving wine from “a bad year”.)

Sadly Randomlinkage is unable to answer this question as we’re too busy yelling “TUXEDO!” and “TRACTOR!” at passers-by.

The Randomlinkage management would like to point out that using the phrase

Only five/four/three more sleeps until Christmas

when you over the age of 8 years old is wrong, is a crime and is punishable by death, a terrible death which will arive slowly in the form of a bombardment of pathetic twee sentences such as the one you uttered to warrant your punishment.

The only exception to this rule is if you are over the age of 8 but you are speaking to someone under the age of 8. This is acceptable, though to be fair every attempt to not use this phrase should be made, lest it become commonplace and infect the language, leading to such sentences as

• “Only three sleeps until my vasectomy!”
• “Only one sleep until I brutally club some seals!”
• “Only five sleeps until my herpes will have died down!”

You have all been warned.