Company for a Dominion night at Tottenham Court Road, W1T and WC1

Charing Cross Road runs south from the junction towards the West End, past the Phoenix Theatre and the five floors of Foyles, which keeps a small auditorium of its own upstairs and stays open later than any bookshop needs to. That road is the whole argument for the postcode: walk it for six minutes and you are among the stage doors, walk it for ten and you are at the Piazza.

North and west the streets calm down immediately. Percy Street and Rathbone Place hold small dining rooms behind Georgian fronts, Hanway Street curves away as a narrow lane most people never notice, and Alfred Place and Store Street are quiet enough by eight to hear your own footsteps. East across the road, Bedford Avenue leads into the garden squares within two minutes.

Theatre guests first. A musical at the Dominion comes down around half past ten, and a guest staying on Berners Street or Bedford Avenue is back in the lobby five minutes later with the rest of the evening unplanned. Then the readers and the diners: guests who spent the afternoon in Foyles or the British Museum and want a table on Charlotte Street or Percy Street to end the day with company worth talking to.

A table before the show and the show itself fit inside four hours at £900. £400 for ninety minutes or £500 for two hours suits the supper after a curtain, and three hours at £700 is the usual answer when the evening starts among bookshelves and has nowhere urgent to be.

The London EDITION on Berners Street keeps a panelled lobby with a carved ceiling and a very long bar, and it is the most comfortable place in the postcode to spend a first half hour after a flight. The Sanderson is further up the same street behind a plain sixties frontage, with a courtyard garden in the middle that comes as a surprise from the pavement. The Radisson Blu Edwardian Grafton stands further north on Tottenham Court Road towards Warren Street.

Serviced flats on Alfred Place and the apartments above Percy Street take the same bookings on the same terms. Buildings she is called to, never associates of this house, and she walks in as your invited guest.

Tottenham Court Road, one minute from the junction, carrying Central, Northern and the Elizabeth line, which runs west through Bond Street and Paddington to Heathrow, and east towards Farringdon. Goodge Street, four minutes north on the Northern, the quieter entrance for anything up towards Alfred Place.

Everything here sits in Zone 1, so the travelling is already counted inside the fee, and the walk from the Dominion doors to the nearest hotel lobby is shorter than the taxi queue at half past ten.

If there is a show in the plan, send its curtain time first and the desk works backwards from it: a table on Percy Street at six, the doors at seven, supper once the audience has cleared. Otherwise the hour, the length, the address and a name, or a line about the evening, are all that is needed, and the reply comes in 10 to 15 minutes.

The desk confirms the name the reservation is under, the hotel and the room, in one message, and returns to it no more. Overnights, events and trips are fixed the same way, simply a little further ahead.

A musical rarely overruns by more than a few minutes, and when it does the hour moves with it rather than being lost. From confirmation, a door in this postcode is usually reached inside the hour.

17:30, Foyles, meeting among the shelves on Charing Cross Road, which asks nothing of either of you. 18:15, a short table on Percy Street, ordered quickly because the kitchen knows the show times. 19:30, the Dominion, stalls or dress circle. 22:30, out through the crowd and across to a quiet bar on Rathbone Place. 23:30, upstairs, with the finale still going round your head.

That shape is four hours at £900. Without the show, three hours at £700 keeps the bookshop and the table, two hours at £500 covers supper after a curtain you watched alone, and ten hours at £1,800 carries it through to breakfast.

Nobody on the list keeps a home address at the crossroads, so arrivals come from the south and the west. Tina walks up from WC2 in about twelve minutes and is the easiest yes on a late request. Thea travels in from South Kensington, caramel blonde with green eyes, and is unhurried company after a long afternoon lost among the shelves. Sonya comes over from Knightsbridge and is the one to write to when you would rather have a conversation than a performance.

Everyone else in the company reaches W1T on the same figures, with the journey inside the fee from every home district.

South down Charing Cross Road lies Leicester Square, with Covent Garden and the Piazza a few minutes beyond it. East across Bedford Avenue, Bloomsbury begins at the first garden square, and Holborn follows it. North up Tottenham Court Road it is about fifteen minutes on foot to Euston. Fitzrovia and Soho lie immediately west and are covered elsewhere.