As a new reporter for The Sun, I was assigned to a human interest story about a man who was supposed to be the oldest person in his village and perhaps the oldest person in the world. I was intrigued to meet the gentleman, and happy to do the interview. When I was done I showed my editor my notes (which I had written on a napkin) of what the old man had said:

"How old am I? Let me add up the days."

"I ‘ave spent as many years as the days that fog covered the world.
I ‘ave lived as long as it took Tiberius to sail a parsec at sea.
For each of Nemo’s cables, a minute I 'ave endured.
As many years as Arthur N. Ford’s answer to the unknown.
I saw the long 'and pass by as often as the traveller circled the sun."

After seeing my notes my editor would not print the article until I could provide the old man’s age.

How old did he claim to be?

(In reply to re: On the side of reality - and a thought by brianjn)

Actually, my first thought about "traveller" -- similar to your idea regarding "wanderer", was "voyager".  Yet, I found nothing that had specified the number of "orbits" either of the two spacecraft had made around our sun...

I did identify another "Traveller", General R. E. Lee's horse.  Yet, the age of the horse taken as minutes to be converted to years would add zero years to the old man's age. 

The reason I settled on H. G. Wells' time traveller is that it somewhat fit a theme -- references to Sci-Fi novels -- to the old man's riddle.

Posted by Dej Mar on 2007-11-02 00:25:01