Time will Tell

'This dusty and tedious little patch of time - could she safely label it drab and have done with it, or would she find herself one day living through a period so relentlessly subfusc that this present lozenge would seem by contrast gay? Jan Struther

Besides, Mrs Miniver was beginning to feel more than a little weary of exchanging ideas (especially political ones) and of hearing other people exchange theirs. It's all very well, she reflected, when ideas have had time to flower, or at least to bud, so that we can pick them judiciously, present them with a bow, watch them unfold in the warmth of each other's understanding; but there is far too much nowadays of pulling up the wretched little things just to see how they are growing. Half the verbal sprigs we hand each other are nothing but up-ended rootlets, earthy and immature: left longer in the ground they might have come to something, but once they are exposed we seldom manage to replant them. It is largely the fault of the times we live in. Things happen too quickly, crisis follows crisis, the soil of our minds is perpetually disturbed. Each of us, to relieve his feelings, broadcasts his own running commentary on the preposterous and bewildering events of the hour: and this, nowadays, is what passes for conversation.