AN international rescue by a Euro MP has led to a pensioner and her handbag being reunited after eight months.

Edith Sheldrick, 71, of Denton Street, Barnoldswick, forgot the bag when she attended a language conference organised by the International Esperanto Congress in Ostend last May.

She had been on a day trip to the parliament building in Brussels as part of the conference.

She said: "I left the bag in the cloakroom and when I realised what I had done I returned about ten minutes later but found it was all locked up.

"Together with a Belgian friend I went to the police station and I spoke to her in Esperanto and she translated to the police.

"I rang the parliament several times but no one had handed the bag in so when the congress was over I returned home."

By August she thought she would never again see the bag which her daughter Heather had bought as a Christmas present when she received a call from security at the parliament building to say her handbag had been handed in.

The guard said the contents would be sent through the post to her -- but if she wanted the bag back she would have to collect it in person. Mrs Sheldrick was not planning a return trip and her friends lived miles away from the parliament building so she turned to her Euro MP Gary Titley for help.

North West MEP Mr Titley said: "MEPs' casework can take many different shapes and forms but this was a first for me.

"The handbag clearly meant a great deal to this constituent and I was only too pleased to lend a helping hand."

Mrs Sheldrick said: "I decided to write to my MEP to see if he could help and the next thing I got a call to say he had the handbag and was sending it back to me. Bless him!"

The former legal accountant had heard about the international language Esperanto before the Second World War, but it was not until 50 years later, as a widow in her 60s, she decided to take it up as a hobby during her retirement.

She said: "I had never learned a foreign language and so I decided to give it a try. A language teacher at Ermysted's Grammar School, Skipton, is fluent in Esperanto and he taught me.

"I now correspond with people all over the world, I have friends in Belgium, Denmark, Italy, France and Tokyo and we all use just one language.

"Since learning Esperanto I feel like a citizen of the world and it has opened up the whole world to me."