I’d never been in a stretch limo before. In fact, I wasn’t even sure I knew what one was, so I had to google it. I was right. So, if anyone saw that long posh white car driving round town last week that was one. The kind of car that looks like it’s been designed by a tug of war team and is literally ‘stretched’.

Now that’s not quite true. In the early days of our Czech twinning, I was picked up in one. We were forming our link, but we’d only met people from one political party-that was the Czech Conservative party. So, I said twinning has to be non-political, so we’d like to meet others. “Ok, ve vill get communist party to meet you…if dis is vot you vant’ (yes, they do speak like that). Next day a dead posh limo turned up for us, with the driver wearing, (what really?), sunglasses and an upturned collar, and sped off silently through the Prague night with the occasional ‘look’ at us and slow smile. Oh dear. And things didn’t get any better when the car screeched down a ramp into the empty underground car park of a supermarket. Dropped us. And then sped off. Another guy appeared out of nowhere. I mean come on guys what is this with the dark glasses! This was January! And silently showed us up to a room. A large, deserted restaurant room where 4 more Communists sat around a table on which ‘something’ unfathomable wobbled in aspic. One spoke. “You may be surprised that I am a communist and yet I own this building”. Actually, I really wasn’t.
A luta continua

But the limo in Bridgwater this week was…. surprise surprise…Portuguese.
RTP television from Lisbon were in town to do a feature on Bridgwater and the Portuguese community living here and they thought a stretch limo would be a good gimmick. Sadly, they’d parked in King Square mistaking Bridgwater House for the Town Hall. And then of course couldn’t get the car around the corners. Without a 95-point turn.
Myself and the Mayor got in. I was dreading what might be inside because the only times I’d seen vehicles like this it usually involved a hen party of drunken women falling out onto the street wearing ‘kiss me quick’ hats and mistaking me for a fat lamp-post on which to steady themselves.
Wonderfully this one was full of Portuguese children who had won a prize to meet the Mayor of Bridgwater, and all came prepared with questions to ask her and wanted their photos taken together afterwards. Alls well that ends well.
There are 2,000 Portuguese citizens living in Somerset today. Mind you there’s 45,000 Brits living in Portugal. The TV wanted to know how they were getting on here.
Vitoria e certa

Bridgwater has a Portuguese twin town. That’s Camacha on the island of Madeira.
There are 5 Portuguese restaurants in Bridgwater now and there’s Portuguese workers in our health service and our nuclear power stations. And they’re very welcome. As Brits are in Portugal, which historians know is this country’s oldest ally. And which we’ve only invaded once. That was shortly after the Spanish Armada when it was taken over by Spain. Visit the seaside resort of Cascais and you’ll quickly appreciate why the siege of Lisbon was so laid back.
Bridgwater was the first town to celebrate the anniversary of the Carnation Revolution- that’s when the people rose up to overthrow the fascist dictatorship in 1974, and we were the first town to have a Portuguese born Mayor.
Everyone we spoke to loved Bridgwater and every Brit we spoke to loved Portugal. And that’s just one small step on the multi-cultural patchwork quilt of the planet that we live on.
More reasons to be cheerful. Part three.