“Aches and pains, did you say? Too big for his boots if you ask me. Robinson’s Fish Stall was good enough for his father and his grandfather before him.”

Petey listened as his mum and Auntie Sharon talked about Uncle Archie. If Uncle Archie’s boots hurt him, they should buy him new ones, not expect him to walk about in them.
Next day they went to Uncle Archie’s new shop in the High Street. “This is a step up from the market stall, eh Petey?” said his uncle, pointing to the curly white letters stretched across the window, under the shop name:

Catch of the Day, Fresh Hake

It was true; the market stall didn’t have any steps at all, but there was a shiny red doorstep that led into the shop. When they were inside, Uncle Archie fastened his blue and white striped apron with tapes that wrapped twice round his middle. His voice sounded different as it bounced off the shiny tiles.

Petey ran round behind the counter to examine his uncle’s feet. Instead of the Moon Boots he wore in the market, his uncle’s legs ended in a pair of black shoes that shone like mussel shells.

“Where’s your boots, Uncle Archie?”

“Boots? No need for them in the shop, bonnie lad.” His uncle chuckled and ruffled Petey’s hair.

“Want to help me get set up?” That alright with you, Sis?”

“I’ll mash the tea in the back,” answered his mum. “That’s one improvement on the stall – we have somewhere to boil a kettle.”

While his mum and clattered about with teabags, milk and packets of biscuits, Petey stood and watched his uncle lay out the fish.

Uncle Archie said Petey would make a fishmonger one day because he was a chip off the old block. Pete didn’t know what that meant but he could tell from the way his uncle's cheeks puffed and made crinkly lines under his eyes that it was a good thing.

"It’s goodbye cockles and whelks." Uncle Archie opened the door of the big freezer behind the counter. “And it’s hello rainbow trout, hake and monkfish tails.” He winked at Petey. “Fried whitebait for tea tonight, what d’you say?”

Bait was for catching fish, but maybe it was one of Uncle Archie’s jokes. Petey’s dad used bait, when he took Petey out fishing on the rocks, but that was a long time ago.

Archie liked his fish lying safe on a slab, Petey's mum said, not jumping about in nets that had to be managed in gale-force winds and blinding sea-spray. He didn’t have guts, like Petey’s dad; only a head full of dreams.

His mum was wrong about the guts. Uncle Archie had plenty of guts and a big bucket to catch them after he slit the fish and drew out the slippery insides with his thick rubber gloves.

Petey smiled and took a deep breath of the smell of seaside, sandcastles and rock pools. He looked on as his uncle laid out the gleaming fish, then realised something was missing.

“You’ve forgotten the ice, Uncle Archie.” His uncle sometimes let him help make the crunchy white beds for the fish, but today the fish were laid out on slabs of glass, with rows of green bristles between.

“No need for ice, Petey,” said his uncle, and pointed to pipes that ran through the thick glass panes. ‘We’ve got the latest technology!”

‘But it looks like an electric blanket, Uncle Archie. You told me fish like to be cold.”

Uncle Archie explained that the pipes were like those in a fridge, and not to worry because they’d keep the fish nicely chilled. “Put your hands there!” he told his nephew, and Petey laid his palms flat on the freezing surface. No wonder the fish seemed to be smiling.

Next he asked Petey to straighten the green rows and took two plastic lobsters from the fridge. As usual his uncle wriggled them, one in each hand, and pretended they were saying, “Hello Petey,” in a voice like the Punch and Judy man on the beach.

Now he was a big boy, Petey wasn’t afraid of them, even when his uncle pretended they were struggling to escape so their claws could pinch his cheeks. He took them and placed them together on the ledge above the window display. They must be proud of their new surroundings.

From the kitchen, Petey’s mum overheard their talk as she lined up four mugs on the draining board.

“Goodbye whelks, indeed!” she muttered to Sharon, adding sugar to the tea and stirring so hard that it slopped onto the draining board. “After four generations!”

She couldn't help thinking then about about Petey's dad. He wasn’t cut out to be a landlubber, he said, when he’d finally left to join the trawlers. One day he’d come back and be proud of Petey, who’d inherited her stay-at-home genes, despite his love for fish.

She took put down the mugs on the gleaming counter: Petey’s with the goldfish pattern, her own porcelain beaker with the pink roses, Sharon’s hand-painted ceramic mug from the Costa del Sol and Archie’s birthday mug with the message in red letters all round: WORLD’S GREATEST UNCLE.

Pete’s mum gave her startled brother a kiss on the cheek and turned the shop door sign to OPEN.

“Drink your tea, Archie,” she said, then gave him a nudge. “Your brother’s the man of action when it comes to the open seas, but I have to admit, ambition and brains are handy when it comes to business.

You ‘ad us all worried with your fancy talk - ‘akes and panes indeed! But I can see there’ll be no stoppin’ you, now you’ve made the change.” She raised her mug of tea and called out: “A toast: to the success of the Robinson family's new venture: ‘Akes and Panes.”

“‘Akes and Panes,” came the hearty response from the others.

But why, she wondered, had Petey suddenly burst out laughing?