My surname's Whittle

When I moved to Nottinghamshire 30 years ago, people were always saying .... and do you whittle a lot? which roughly translated means - do you fret anxiously and complain continuously about not very important subjects.

It was puzzling at the time, mainly because it was invariably delivered as an enormous shaft of wit, and I didn't understand what they were talking about. Prior to coming to this area, whittling had meant carving a piece of wood with a knife - in the fashion of John Dillinger's wooden gun.