Judging a Book By Its Cover

From the beginning, Ned Kelly has this keen sense of detail in the most peculiar places, and I am trying to figure out if he is just obsessive-compulsive about cleanliness or if in his mind he groups different types of people in categories based on the details that he is paying attention to. When going into the police station he notes about the odor of him and his mother stating that they had a "strong odour about us like wet dogs" (8). And then after this statement of their hygiene he mentioned that it was probably the reason for not being allowed in the Sergeant's room. I know that this is supposed to be a memoir-like for his daughter, so that she will know every detail of her family's history, but is it really necessary to include those small of details? In the same part of the story, Ned goes on to talk about how his mother was trying to bring Quinn a cake while in jail. He again proceeds to mention the tiniest of details about the "trap" or police-officer, how he smelled of a "foreign-spicy smell," his "handlebar mustache," and how "his scalp was shining through his hair." He even noted how "his fingernails [were] so clean they looked like they was washed in lye." I know this is not saying much, but I really believe that his attention to these kind of details will later result in clarifying a bigger picture for us as readers or even him as the narrator.