Book of days, hours and minutes

One wonders whether Washington’s Reverend Robert Shields , the recently deceased man who seemed to spend most of his life documenting his life was ever reduced to rendering his five-minute updates thus.

‘7.15am Am updating diary. Feels a bit cold. I may soon switch typewriters. I have a slight itch on my left hand. I have now switched typewriters, and am wondering what to write next.

‘7.20am Am updating diary again. It’s a bit warmer than it was five minutes ago. I think a fly may just have entered the room. Might have to go to the toilet in a bit.’

‘7.25am Am updating diary some more. Have switched typewriters again as the action on old number three was getting a little rusty, and the ribbon a little thin. The temperature is middling. The fly seems to have traversed the room several times. I wonder what it could be looking for. Now it appears to be headbutting the glass. The toilet is beckoning.’

At 3.75 million words to document around 25 years, this must qualify as the most extreme exercise in autobiography ever attempted, although one wonders how it will be viewed in more than four decades, when it is opened and studied – and what manner of tests his identifying nostril hair will be subjected to. Perhaps a clone will be grown from the hair and placed in museums, programmed with a thorough knowledge of the Reverend’s life and able to converse with any willing visitor at length and depth about his many terms for urination (three dozen, presumably none of them swears). Either that, or some brave conceptual soul will use it as source material for an outlandish art work. These two exercises are, to some extent, interchangeable.

Or, in his book of days, hours and minutes, Reverend Shield may hold the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Fantastic future, it’s over to you.