The truth of the expression ’it’s all swings and roundabouts’ to describe the ups and downs of life has come home to many of us over this turbulent year.

For Katryna Baptist it has been especially true.

Katryna started a new business, Fire and Ice, selling street food out of a vintage fire truck and everything was looking promising until Covid-19 happened: ’I spent all the winter booking events TT, Southern 100 - all of them got cancelled. It was really disheartening.’

Katryna is Manx (her maiden name is Quiggin) and until recently she and her husband Matthew were living and working in London.

But, along with their three children, twins Brooke and Delta, aged seven, and Evie, two, the family have been frequent visitors to the island and they always thought that they would eventually like to settle here.

Then, last year, fate took a hand.

Katryna recalls: ’Matthew lost his job so we went travelling. We packed up the house and packed up the kids in our caravan and we went.

’We spent the winter and we travelled all over Spain in our little caravan. We went skiing and we went to the beach, we spent November through to March there so we got to see a lot.

’It was lovely and really nice for the kids.’

Whilst they were in Spain they were also considering work options for the future and Katryna spotted a vintage French fire truck for sale online: ’Matthew flew back and bought it and put it into storage.’

Matthew had also found his ideal job, as Laxey Glen Mills’ new strategic development manager.

Katryna says: ’So then we just never went back [to the UK], we came back here because we realised this is where we wanted to be.’

They came to the island in March when everything was shutting down. The little fire truck was brought over from the UK on the boat but at that point there were no events for it to go to.

Then everything changed as the island has opened up and everyone has been out and about, staycationing and enjoying local events so it has been all go again for Fire and Ice.

Katryna says: ’Now it’s the best place to be and it’s great. I love it because I’m out meeting people and everyone’s so friendly and all the other local food businesses have been so supportive.’

Right from the start Katryna wanted to offer big flavours and put the emphasis on local ingredients.

She lists what they use: ’Noa sliders and Andreas Meat sausages and we also use some of the sausages from Dylan, the lovely butcher in Pulrose.

’He does us these special sausage burgers which go down a treat - we make the sliders ourselves but he does all the others, like chilli burgers, lamb and mint and steak burgers.

’They’re all made fresh for us and we put different toppings on. We also have some of his sausages, like Welsh dragon sausages and pork apple and bacon - he’s happy to make to order - and we have the Andreas Meat Company’s Cumberland sausages.

’As well as Noa we also use bread from Ramsey Bakery and products from the Creamery.’

Katryna’s other business venture which has been proving popular is renting out campervans for staycations - they have three on offer.

Matthew had been renovating another van for the family to use but it has just been commandeered.

Katryna is launching it this weekend as a coffee and cake van.

She says: ’We’re calling it The Beach Bus - we’ll be using Noa coffee and brownies and we’ll have other cakes too.’

All in all, Katryna is not exaggerating when she says: ’It’s been a very entrepreneurial year for us.’