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What do tourists do? They walk, they stand, they look, they buy. They fumble for money on buses, not knowing whether to pay the driver or the conductor. They visit famous monuments, fountains, old houses full of stone and shutters and anachronistic lace. They notice that the day without duty passes with the slowness of a dream. They know that their existence is without point. They envy those who go arm in arm, who have a home to go to.

Does "old houses full of stone and shutters and anachronistic lace" mean "old houses made of stone that have shutters and old lace curtains"? Can we say that "anachronistic lace" here means "old curtains"?

And does "They notice that the day without duty passes with the slowness of a dream" mean "They notice that the day without duty passes very slowly like a dream"?

Source: The Children's Bach by Helen Garner

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    Presumably the idea is that lace curtains are old-fashioned, but the owners of picturesque old houses still use them to be in keeping with the style of the house. It's not the curtains that are old, but the style.
    – Kate Bunting
    Aug 6, 2021 at 7:55
  • Lots of thanks, is my understanding about "They notice that the day without duty passes with the slowness of a dream." correct? Does it mean "They notice that the day without duty passes very slowly like a dream"? Do you have any idea?
    – Viser Hashemi
    Aug 6, 2021 at 8:26
  • @kate, lace curtains are dated, but I think they are anachonistic in the sense that they are more modern than the old stone houses. lace curtains are a product of mechanisation. Nobody could afford to hang hand-made lace in their windows.
    – James K
    Aug 6, 2021 at 12:09
  • @JamesK Yes, you are probably right.
    – Kate Bunting
    Aug 6, 2021 at 13:10
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    Viser - Yes, of course that is what it means. When you have nothing particular to do, time seems to pass more slowly.
    – Kate Bunting
    Aug 6, 2021 at 13:11

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Anachronistic means "not of its time". A digital watch in a film about the 1800s would be anachronistic. I'm not enough of an expert in curtains to be sure, but I would assume from this text that lace curtains are a more modern invention, and so putting lace curtains in an old stone house is an anachronism.

(Some research suggests that curtains were rare before 1750, and lace was too valuable to be hung by a window to rot in the sun)

Your interpretation of the poetic line about "a day without duty" is correct.

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