It’s a familiar tale: an immigrant arrives on our shores with a strong work ethic and a desire to make a better life.

Jevgenij Delivron, better known as JJ, trod this path when he came to the Isle of Man in 2008. He had just finished university where he had qualified as a transport engineer when he came to join a friend who was already working here.

JJ started out driving taxis until he suddenly had one of those ‘light bulb’ moments that people have when they spot a business opportunity.

He says: ‘I bought on the internet some blades for shaving and they weren’t sharp enough, so I bought some stones thinking I’d do it myself. But there was too much metal to take [the shaver] apart so I was looking for someone in the island who could do it for me.

‘I couldn’t find anyone so I thought: “That’s a good gap in the market”.’

He goes on: ‘People advised me to go to the government to get a support grant so I went for a business training course and I got about £5,000 to start the business. In the beginning me and my wife, Valentina, put all our savings into the business so she helped me a lot as well.’

He set up Manx Sharp Blades in a unit in Kirk Michael which wasn’t in the best condition.

He recalls: ‘When I got in there, the floor was black and I was thinking it was some kind of paint, but it was grease because, when I cleaned it, it was just a concrete floor, not even painted. It took me about five months to make it nice and clean because the problem was I couldn’t do it in one go because I had machinery standing there so I had to do it in one half, move the machinery, clean, then do the other half.’

JJ had continued driving taxis at night so that he could put all the money he made from sharpening back into the business and buy more equipment for different, specialised jobs. When he bought a big power hammer he had to take on an adjacent unit because he had nowhere left to put it. Now he is finalising the lease on a bigger unit on the Jurby Industrial Estate.

He can sharpen everything from kitchen tools and gardening tools to all type of scissors, clipper blades for humans, dogs or horses, sheep shears, all the equipment for tree surgery hedge trimmers. He has special machines for welding the bandsaw blades and he has even built himself a gas furnace.

When he moves to his new unit he will have the space to be able to buy an even bigger machine which will enable him to sharpen, for example, the blades used in the sawmill and some of the larger joinery workshops in the island. These currently have to be sent across for sharpening and the postage alone is expensive. He is also looking for investment to build a forge there, to revive some old blacksmithing skills.

He is still driving the taxi part time, on a Thursday, Friday, Saturday, often not finishing until six o’clock in the morning.

He says: ‘Since I started the sharpening business I carry on working in the taxi and this is why I could manage to get so much equipment in a short time because all the money from sharpening is going back into the business. I invest it 100% so that’s why I’m growing fast.’

When I first met JJ I assumed he was ‘Russian’. A couple of weeks before the invasion of Ukraine he came to our house to see about a piece of equipment my son was getting rid of. He was telling my son that his best friend was in Ukraine and he was trying to get him out.

We think of the current war in Ukraine as being Russians versus Ukrainians but JJ’s story shows that it is a lot more complicated than that, involving as it does so many nationalities that all formerly felt themselves to be part of the Soviet Republic.

JJ says: ‘I was born in Tajikistan, that was part of the USSR. My mother, she’s from Ukraine so we have part of our family in Ukraine, and my father, his father was born in Russia but his mother’s parents were French.

‘I was brought up in Lithuania and my wife is from Latvia: we talk Russian because our parents were Russian.

‘I know the Lithuanian language, my wife she knows Latvian language, but our first language Is Russian.

‘We have family in Ukraine, in Kyiv and Lviv. I have friends there who are now missing their mum for about a week: maybe her phone died or she doesn’t remember the telephone number because she is in Mariupol where it’s really bad – really, really bad.’

His Ukrainian best friend cannot leave, as all men aged between 18-60 have been ordered to stay.

‘Before it all started I sent him money and told him to leave and go to the Poland, just get out, but he is a patriot of his country so he decided to stay and now there has been a lot of battles and a lot of his friends have died and now he wants to get out but he can’t.’

JJ’s sister in Lithuania is also worried and thinking about leaving the country.

JJ says: ‘The thing is many people think that Putin will not stop just taking over Ukraine. They think he might want to rebuild the Soviet Union: Tajikistan, Kazakhstan all those countries. Probably he will go to Moldova because in Moldova they have a lot of Russian military so it will be very easy, just a couple of days, and then Georgia and then they probably will go Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania – all the Baltic countries.’

His parents are also in Lithuania and he says: ‘They try to be neutral, not supporting Russia but supporting more or less Ukraine, but probably they are looking at Russian news.

‘Everybody is lying, I don’t know who to believe: the terrible thing is that people who don’t want any war are dying.’

You may have seen reports in this newspaper of Russian people being abused here in the island.

JJ says: ‘In the taxi, people ask me where I’m from and all that because they hear my accent, so I tell the people: “I speak Russian but I’m not really from Russia”.

‘I grew up most of my life in Lithuania, I’ve never lived in Russia at all and I probably more Ukrainian because my mother is 100% Ukrainian and both her parents were Ukrainian.’

Right now, JJ is just very thankful that he lives in the Isle of Man, where life is normal, he has a thriving business, and he can take his two young daughters to their swimming lesson on a Saturday morning.

I think we are all counting our blessings.

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