Jamaica

First of a few interviews up to Black History month:

(Photo: woman reciting poetry at a recent African charity launch in London)

Alwyn Simpson, 51, is a charity worker, public-sector employee and long-time trade union rep. He pays his bills, looks after his family, likes the idea of contributing to his community and gets off his behind to do it, and does a good line in talking dead losses round to the point of philanthropy, etc. He also has that enviable knack of convincing big companies to donate freebies to voluntary and community projects: Marks & Sparks, Starbucks, and other of the famed millennium corporates that get on everyone's tits. He's spent most of his life in London, although there was an interval of some years in Jamaica. Anyway - he is an unusual man.

And a welcome one, one would have thought: alas, there are days when Simpson isn't sure. There was a morning recently in Blackpool, for instance, when a fellow diner at a cafe kept muttering 'shut up, shut up,' as Simpson and a Gambian friend talked about a charity project as they ate their meal. They were going to pretend that they couldn't hear her, except that she made a special trip to their table to make sure that they could. 'Best of British, wog,' she said to them. Then, she left. 'Her husband apologised,' Simpson says. 'That was Blackpool.'