A run of nights written as a single arrangement
A run is anything longer than one night: three nights around a conference, a week while you are in London, a standing arrangement across a season. It is quoted as a whole rather than added up out of ten hour nights, because the shape of it matters more than the arithmetic does. Tell the desk the dates, where you are staying and roughly how the days divide between work and everything else, and a figure comes back covering her time across the entire arrangement.
Everything shorter sits on the rail at published figures. A run is the one engagement quoted case by case, and a weekend is quoted rather than listed. The whole figure is written down before the first night begins. Nothing further is added at any point once the figure is written down.
Who suits this call
A shortlist rather than the whole company. If none of these is free on your night, the desk will name three more who carry the same evening just as well.
What a run actually looks like
Rarely what people first picture. The common version is evenings together and days apart: you work, she does her own thing, and you meet at seven. Three or four of the nights are proper evenings with a table or a performance in them, one or two are quiet ones. She does not sit in a hotel room waiting between them. Where you want her present for a particular dinner or event, that goes into the plan at the beginning and is written down with the rest.
Where a long stay works best
Serviced flats and the larger hotel rooms, for the ordinary reason that a week in a standard double is a week of nobody having anywhere to put anything. The apartments around Bloomsbury and the quieter streets behind Euston suit it, and so does any building with a lift, a porter and a lobby people cross without looking up. Every address in WC2 sits inside the travelling already counted in the figure, whichever you take.
Why a run is written early
A run takes a week out of a diary that cannot then be offered to anybody else, and the pieces arranged around it, a dress for one evening, a train, a table held for four, are often settled before you arrive. Writing a fortnight out keeps every one of those pieces easy. If the house has to call it off, you owe nothing.
Changing plans halfway through
Plans move, and a run is written expecting them to. An extra night is added at the same rate as the others wherever her diary allows it, and a night dropped inside two hours of its start is charged at half, like any booking on this site. If a meeting swallows a Thursday, say so at breakfast rather than at seven: the evening moves instead of evaporating, and nobody minds in the slightest. The desk stays reachable throughout, at every hour of every day.
Names who suit a long arrangement
Patricia travels with a watercolour box and is entirely content in her own company on a working day, which counts for more across a week than anything else on this page. Thea walks properly, and will have found something worth seeing by the time you finish. Margo rewards patience and is the name regulars settle on once they know how they like a week to run, one of the thirties group. Rosa is curious about everything and good at an unstructured evening.
Standing arrangements
Some guests are in London the same week every month and would rather write once than write twelve times. That is kept as a standing note in the diary rather than a contract: dates pencilled ahead, confirmed a fortnight out each month, dropped without penalty while they are still only pencilled and on the ordinary terms once a month has been confirmed. It is the closest thing to an ongoing arrangement offered here, and it exists because regulars asked for it rather than because it was ever advertised.
This evening, answered
Because they are never the same shape twice. Three nights around a conference and a week with two events in it need different arrangements, so the desk quotes the whole thing once, in writing, and that figure then does not move afterwards.
Yes, and it is quoted as part of the same arrangement. Travel days sit inside the same written quote, flights and rooms are booked in your name, and the travel page sets out how those days are handled.
Her own day, entirely. She is not on call between evenings and the arrangement says so from the start. If you would like her free at short notice on a particular afternoon, put it in the plan and it is priced along with everything else.
A fortnight is comfortable and gives you a real choice of company, while a few days is often possible. Anything longer than a week, or anything with travel in it, is worth writing about a month ahead, and the desk says honestly what is still open.
Written for this evening
Other evenings
Call the stage door
One message names the evening you want and the desk answers inside a quarter of an hour, at any point on the clock. Tell us the day, the hour, how long you would like and where she should come, and the rest is written down for you.
Running order
- Half hour
- Beginners
- YouCurtain up
- Interval
- Final bow