An evening with no performance in it, on either side
The phrase is an awkward one and the thing behind it is simple enough: an evening that behaves like one you might have had anyway. No running order, no itinerary, nobody playing a part. She arrives, you talk, something gets ordered, the hours go. It is what guests ask for once they have booked here a few times, and it also suits a first booking better than anything else on the sheet, because there is nothing at all to get right.
It is priced exactly as the rest of them are. Two hours is £500, three is £700, four with a dinner in it is £900, and nothing on the rail moves because of what an evening happens to be called. Most of these run in WC2 hotels and flats, though the quieter end of the circuit around Holborn suits them just as well once chambers have emptied for the night.
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.
The length this one needs
An hour is enough for a drink and a conversation but not really enough for this, because the first twenty minutes of any evening go on arriving. Two hours is where it begins to work. Three is where people stop noticing the time at all. Four with a table in it is the version most regulars settle on, and the hours after the meal are usually the ones they were actually booking. Start at two if you are unsure, and lengthen it another time rather than on the night.
What the desk tells her beforehand
Very little, and deliberately so. Your first name, where she is going, the hour, the length, and whatever you have said about the register you want the evening to have. Work is off the table if you tell us it is, and it will not resurface later. Would you rather she chose where you eat? She has views and is glad to use them. What the desk never passes on is anything you have not told it, because there is nothing else in the file to pass on.
An evening with nothing in the diary
The usual shape is no shape. A drink somewhere downstairs or a bottle upstairs, an hour of the kind of conversation that goes sideways, food at some point, a walk if the weather has behaved. The Piazza after ten, once the day crowds have gone and the buskers are packing up, is a better twenty minutes than most planned things in this city. None of that needs arranging in advance and none of it costs anything beyond the hours you booked.
Who is asked for by name
Nancy is the easiest company on the sheet, blue eyed, warm and entirely without ceremony. Tina knows every shopfront in the quarter and will tell you what used to be there. Roxi is laughing before the sentence is finished, usually at her own expense. Lucy is gentle from the first minute and good at an evening that asks no effort of you, and Molly is warmth rather than polish. Three of those five are brunettes, which matters less here than on any other page.
A first booking, if this is one
Nothing is required of you beyond being in your own room. You do not have to plan, to entertain, or to have done any of this before, and the desk would rather know it is a first booking so that it can say what happens at each step. Verification is one line, the figure is written down before she leaves, and the booking page reads the whole sequence out in order. The single thing worth getting right is honesty about the hours: book what you want rather than the least you think you can ask for.
What it is not
There is no script here, and no promise about what any evening contains beyond her time and her company. Everybody on this sheet is an adult making her own decisions about her own evenings, which is the reason the word warm appears on this page and the word guaranteed does not. If the conversation fails to catch on a given night, that is a thing that happens between two people, and nobody is charged a penny more for it.
This evening, answered
No. The rail carries one set of figures and every engagement reads off it. Two hours is £500 whether the evening stays quiet at your hotel or runs to a table and a walk through the market afterwards.
Not at all. A bar first is common, dinner is common, a walk once the quarter empties is better than either. Say roughly what you have in mind when you write so she dresses for it, then change your mind on the night if you want to.
Then you have had a civil evening in decent company and that is the end of it. Nobody performs enthusiasm here. If you would rather try a different name next time, tell the desk, and it is taken as useful information rather than as a complaint.
No, and a good share of these evenings are first bookings. Regulars ask for it by name because they already know how they like an evening to run. A first time guest gets the same two hours and a desk that explains every step as it goes.
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