"Double V"...

... as the French would have it. Or, "W" which muuranker suggested for the ten things that I love meme (or "Joe" as I'm now calling him [Fred meet Joe; Joe meet Fred]). So here goes.

1. Wastwater. I lived on Wastwater Rise when I was very little. It didn't have a view of the lake... or the screes or the tarns hidden up around the valley or the wind. When I think of home, that's it (or half of it, and the other half is Braystones beach and doesn't start with "w" at all). Especially in winter with the cloud down low and curtains of rain... and damp sheep.
2. Which leads me neatly onto: wool. I love all yarns and, a bit like bookshops and art supplies shops, I can't pass a yarn shop without going in and succumbing to the temptation to buy. It could just as easily be tapestry yarn and canvas and a fresh supply of blunt-ended needles (I rust or at least badly deplate a needle in a day) as knitting wool and needles. The way wool takes up colour (and I'm not really in this colour malarkey) whether soft natural dyes or bright chemical dyes is just wonderful. The properties of the different breeds, the elasticity, the texture. Hand-knit, custom-sized woollen socks: absolute heaven.
3. And while I'm knitting I can always listen to the wireless. These days I'm back to being a radio 4 groupie. It wasn't always the way. At nine or so, when I first started "borrowing" my mother's radio, I listened to radio 3, especially late at night when it broadcast the Open University. The background to daily life as a child was radio 4, tho'. It's quite pleasing to see this repeated in the next generation: when I tell Looby Loo to switch off the TV, it inevitably starts an argument as to whether she should turn to radio 3 (her choice) or radio 4 (mine). (It used to be that we turned to BBC7, but the reorganisation early last year that shifted the drama series just slightly (cheating me of Sherlock Holmes) and got rid of the "tween" oriented programs caused us to defect.) Interestingly, what Looby Loo often wants to hear is the news. So, mostly, radio 4 is the background to my life, especially In Our Time and Thinking Allowed and FOOC and Open Country. The drama isn't as good as I remember from years back and the horribly truncated classic serials just irritate. But access via the PC, downloading, and Listen Again all make life wonderfully flexible, especially with the...
4. Wireless network. Such a good thing not being tied to a desk (even if I'm generally still trailing a power cord). The cats don't like it, if it means my laptop really is on my lap.
5. Which leads us onto whiskers... on kittens (or fully grown cats), and whiffly barbels on catfish, and moustaches and sideburns and beards on men.
6. Wood's good for lots. And it smells, has grain and texture, is flexible when young and enduringly solid when old. It's wilderness; it can be worked. It makes bows and spindles. It's in the fire on the and the washed-up bleached logs on the beach. I'm especially happy that it's made into casks that age sherry and are then reused for...
7. Whisky, scotch. From the correct islands (Arran, Jura, Islay, Orkney). Neat. I get drunk in a different way with whisky to any other tipple (Absinthe excepted), not sleepy, the cogs in the brain well lubricated. One thing that's never affected by whisky is my...
8. Walking. As a non-cycling non-driver, it's probably a good thing that walking makes me happy. It does, done outdoors (treadmills are fit only for ancient prisons) with suitable surroundings and enough urgency to arrive to keep the pace brisk. I think clearer walking.
9. West. I orient myself by knowing that when the hills are on my right and the setting sun's over the sea on my left I'm facing north (and all's well with the world). Sunrise over the the sea? A nasty perversion invented by folk who don't know what's right and proper (and probably support the wrong cricket team and sport the wrong colour rose). West is the view from an empty Braystones beach with Man in the distance and a golden path across the waves towards it. West is waters warmed by the gulf stream, sheltered by Ireland, gardens growing plants more suited to tropical climes, rain, rain, rain. West is also the open sea and skies going on with no end.
10. Words. 'Nuff said, really. Or, maybe, "Word over all, beautiful as the sky!" or sometimes "words fail, words fall, like rock, like falling stone". Measured, precise; slippery, ambiguous. Utterly necessary.

So, the meme:

Comment and I'll provide you with a letter of the alphabet (and I promise to stick to the standard 26-letter roman one, unless you fancy Greek or Cyrillic or the odd outlandish character). You then list, with whatever illustration or amplification seems fit, 10 things you love that begin with that letter.