I wonder who the police call on for interpreters with so many people coming over this year? An interesting sideline to main TT issues, but perhaps an indication that not everyone over here wants to "rip off" the visitors. My elderly neighbour, who died in January at 86, was for some 35 years a voluntary translator in Dutch, French and German and would travel to Douglas any time, day or night to translate for a witness/suspect. Once she was 80 she declined to drive to Douglas in the middle of the night (and in fact wouldn't drive at all during TT because "I'm just not as fast as I used to be and these modern bikes seem to go so very fast"), so the police would collect her and return her to near Ballaugh.

Her last "call out' was in the middle of the night and she must have been about 83. She was collected by Ramsey police and taken to the Bungalow (if I recall it correctly) and then handed over to Douglas police; spent some time at HQ but then on the way back to the Bungalow there was an emergency call for the police transporting her. Eventually she got back to the Bungalow, but there was a lengthy delay before Ramsey was able to send a car for her. After a long, cold wait she got home. She decided to call it a day beacuse she was jsut getting a bit too old for "all those endless hours at night".

But I think she must have been a godsend all those years for people in a foreign land when they were in trouble or had witnessed a bad accident. She was very calm, totally unshockable and rather wise (totally fluent as well). I hope there are others out there as good as she certainly was. Just one of the unsung hereos.

What a lovely lady. It does your heart good to hear of people like her.