The Descent Of Manfred

Manfred Begins An Adventure

Gerald Shepherd — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 13:05:11 +0000

Manny pulled the flashing light lichen covered cord on the manta ray trap door and peered inside. A robot chimpanzee made from individually crumpled up sheets of newspaper stuffed in a string vest was performing a handstand. His appreciative audience seemed to consist of dried stick people pulled from the coat of a spectral dog which guarded the nebulous outskirts of the anthropomorphic garden. The scarecrow locals called the garden Percy. Manny climbed down the sea squirt ladder holding a video camera disguised as Mae West’s lips.

Manfred Begins An Adventure

Gerald Shepherd — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 22:00:50 +0000

Manny was busy watering his collection of Portuguese-man-o-war with his favourite water pistol when half a person entered through one quarter of a door. They exchanged greetings like King Edward potatoes thrown in a sack and then put a kettle on the cat who was curled up on a mousetrap. Both people stood under their own private clouds but only Manny got wet. Sometime later a crack appeared in the ground running towards the medieval front door but Manny was more concerned when Disney, his dalmatian dog, ran in wearing only two pairs of striped stockings.

Manfred Begins An Adventure

Gerald Shepherd — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 15:49:05 +0000

Manny balanced a stone vase on his head and waited for the cobweb men to make spirited knocks on the door. A sea sprite puffed on a pink rock and blew out a smoke ring and several brass washers. They clanked on the stone age floor while the old miner sitting on a pole caught a fish as it emerged from under his flat cap and flapped down the front of his face. The hand still looking for its body tried to shake and the foot without a shoe walked off. The door opened as the guitarist beat a drum and the psychedelic shadows entered.

Manfred Begins An Adventure

Gerald Shepherd — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 19:05:43 +0000

Manny, who had been laying on a bed of Second World War hand grenades while throwing ornamental sticks of dynamite in the air was surprised by a loud bang outside. He climbed up the rope ladder he kept wound up inside an imitation tortoise shell hanging from his left ear (next to an ATS badge). He then pulled out a bicycle pump from his back pocket and blew up the fragment of Seventeenth Century rural scenery previously hidden in a packet of Neolithic chewing gum. He stared and said a centipede prayer to himself.

Manfred Begins An Adventure

Gerald Shepherd — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 18:47:38 +0000

Manny pulled the cord that controlled his automatic stilts. They stopped abruptly and he climbed down into a sacred nettle patch where the sentient stone lay contentedly devising complex mathematical equations only it could solve. It was still alive despite repeated attempts by the monkey mob down the street to murder it. It was later to be found to be a member of the “Immortals” so the primates had been wasting their time. A continental shifted leaf fell to earth and a piece of paper untidily cast on the camouflaged floor prophesied a war between miscellaneous bones in rival arms and legs.

Manfred Begins An Adventure

Gerald Shepherd — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 18:12:55 +0000

Manny was pedalling hard as the “secret camp on a bicycle” sped up the pagoda shaped hill – this was mirrored in the floating distance by a rain cloud shaped like a Stetson hat (mermaids were seen playing on the brim before diving into the inky sea). He was thinking of nothing – Nothing was a cat which had grown up inside a small boy who used to live next door; when the boy had grown up he was spat out over the fence – the fence was made from giant fish scales and reflected a map of the world when the light was shining in a particular way.

Manfred Begins An Adventure

Gerald Shepherd — Sun, 17 Apr 2011 17:51:50 +0000

Manny pulled a fully articulated Trojan warrior from his pocket and blew his nose. A rainbow emerged from the hat it had been wearing. A completely new and unexplored landscape was reflected in the small intestine shaped mirror hanging by the coat purportedly worn by the robot Merlin. He was keen to explore the now visible seaside vista and was amazed by it’s dental white cliffs and Georgian wig seaweed. He whistled for his pair of cognisant Wellington boots and chewed the blank map to a fine detailed paste.

Manfred Begins An Adventure

Gerald Shepherd — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 20:00:24 +0000

Manny could hear the jigsaw spirits calling in the distance and reached for his nuclear catapult. His entirely vegetable and perpetually growing butler came up the private, fully mobile, spiral staircase holding a model of the Titanic held inside an ice cube; he put it on the organic table – the table sighed then scratched it’s leg. Two ominous black shapes sped down the boa constrictor garden as a chess board was taken out of nearby concrete mixer and a number of small eggs scattered on it.

Manfred Begins An Adventure

Gerald Shepherd — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:41:05 +0000

Manny sat on his hill of mangled junk which he had accidentally found the week before last week; he was staring at the giant mouth made from crumpled pyjamas which was speaking in a strange dialect he had never heard before. It spoke of entire cities embedded in frog spawn and of philosophising gem stones suspended by slug slime. He was marvelling at this prospect when the only super hero ferret in the universe ambled by holding a motorised bath sponge.

Hello world!

Gerald Shepherd — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 17:36:08 +0000

This blog is concerned with the strange Adventures of Manfred Wing who is one of the Country Boys (or Famous Four And A Half). These are pseudonyms of the artist Gerald Shepherd of which Manfred is the first (circa 1975). The others are Peter “Rabbit” White, Simple Simon (sometimes Simon King) and little Gerry Hattrick himself. From 1984 they were joined in some pictures (but not stories) by Peter Panic, however he is not considered one of the group. Gerald Shepherd has since exhibited his work under other identities (Alan Hendricks and Paul Stuart Whitty) but has never included these in his stories. All the early stories have been lost.