Word Association Friday Five

When I was a child, we often played word association during long car journeys...For some reason, we were particularly prone to arriving at words with a food connotation, and if those were noticed the next person could yell "FOOD" and gain bonus points. I'm going to play straight with this week's Friday Five, but if I get to "Food", you may have the bonus.

Singing Owl writes This post is loosely based on previous "wordy" Friday Fives from Reverend Mother and Songbird. I liked the results, and so we are doing another word association . Theirs were based on words from a lectionary text. Mine comes from the Lovin' Spoonful song, "Summer in the City." Think summer......are you there? Below you will find five words or phrases. Tell us the first thing you think of on reading each one. Your response might be simply another word, or it might be a sentence, a poem, a memory, a recipe, or a story. You get the idea:

1. rooftop Always, and instantly, the chimney-sweep scene from Mary Poppins...

2. gritty - sand in the sandwiches...warm white bread and liver pate, eaten on St Leonards beach throughout the endless summers of early childhood

3. hot town (yeah, I know, it's two words)London the summer before we moved out. All our other friends with small children were away with grandparents in the leafy Home Counties, while we stayed on in the city because self-employment has always meant short holidays...Hattie Gandhi and I would push Hugger Steward in his buggy over to the swings and slides of the "Red Train Park" on Clapham Common. Where there had always been a group of friends, now we were almost the only people there, watching the grass turn yellow and die as the sun beat down for day after day. At the end of that summer, we found Lower Farmhouse - quite by accident. We weren't house hunting at all, when suddenly there it was. The Georgian fronted dolls house, with orchard and porch ready to receive gumboots, that was all the house I'd ever wanted. We moved out at the start of December, and I can't imagine ever living in a city again.

4. night - darkness falling on the site at Greenbelt. Transformation as the festival village takes on a wholly different feeling...music drifts over from mainstage...bubbles float, magical in fairy lights of the nearest stall....candles in storm lanterns make pools of light to sit around at the Tiny Tea Tent. No wonder I can never bear to leave for bed

5. dance - summer dances mean May Balls for me, always and forever. The thrill of seeing those beautiful buildings made yet more lovely by starlight...the pleasure of dressing up and knowing how good you look in the dress you've spent weeks hunting for...endless variety of music in all directions....The night will last forever...we will always be young and shiney...This will always be Cambridge in summer.