Don't worry, Penelope, I understand perfectly. My little sports car sometimes needs a bit of fettling. Some of that I do myself but mostly, because I don't have the equipment, it goes somewhere where it can be fettled by experts. Perhaps there is some sort of salacious meaning in Stevie's world but, like you, I'm not prepared to check. :)

It's the windy miller's 50th birthday this October. My plan is to have his replica Lotus Super7 (which has been stored in a potato warehouse somewhere in our village for at least 7 years - I have never seen it) fettled and back on the road so we can drive to his 50th birthday party in it. I think I've just found someone who can do it for us. Now all I need is the key to the potato warehouse.

As a Geordie, "fettle" has a different usage for me. For example "what fettle the day?", meaning "how are you doing today?" and "in good fettle" meaning "in good form/condition" (e.g. Alan Shearer was in good fettle the day he scored a 2nd half hat-trick against Leicester, to win 4-3). I suppose it's quite similar, but I'd not realised it could be used as a verb before.

There are quite a few nouns that can be verbed, but some that should never undergo that treatment ('leverage', for one). In my job (mostly editing/using English written by non-native speakers) I often find myself making changes that insert the verb of a noun - and I guess it's because it's easy to gather a vocabulary of nouns in a foreign language, but less easy to know which of them can be verbed. From my experience anyway.

Some people get bent out of shape about the "modern" habit of "verbing nouns". I have my own list of hates as you all know, but I had a think about this one, concluded the practice was a *lot* older than anyone usually credits and crossed it off my list.