Tidens gang

Ikke bare passerte Dronten 300 poster her om dagen, dens etårsdag har også tasset stille og rolig forbi: Drontens første post ble lagt ut 9. januar i fjor.

Tiden går med andre ord. Og vi kan vanskelig tenke oss noen bedre måte å feire det på enn det understående sitat fra Thomas Hardy, fra novellen Fellow Townsmen. Det er muligens den beste skildring av tidens gang vi kjenner, og et glitrende eksempel på Hardys blanding av ømhet og satire:

Twenty-one years and six months do not pass without setting a mark even upon durable stone and triple brass; upon humanity such a period works nothing less than transformation. In Barnet's old birthplace vivacious young children with bones like india-rubber had grown up to be stable men and women, men and women had dried in the skin, stiffened, withered, and sunk into decrepitude; while selections from every class had been consigned to the outlying cemetery. Of inorganic differences the greatest was that a railway had invaded the town, tying it on to a main line at a junction a dozen miles off. Barnet's house on the harbour-road, once so insistently new, had acquired a respectable mellowness, with ivy, Virginia creepers, lichens, damp patches, and even constitutional infirmities of its own like its elder fellows. Its architecture, once so very improved and modern, had already become stale in style, without having reached the dignity of being old-fashioned. Trees about the harbour-road had increased in circumference or disappeared under the saw; while the church had had such a tremendous practical joke played upon it by some facetious restorer or other as to be scarce recognizable by its dearest old friends.

(Portrettet av Hardy er forøvrig malt av Reginald Eves (1823-1903).)