Service LogOne message · from £250 an hour

The Service Log: what the desk has learned, written down

Every good reception keeps a log. Ours records the things guests ask about most often and the answers that turned out to be right: which streets are quiet at seven, which hotels sit on which side of a boundary road, how long a walk really takes after dark, and what happens, in order, between a first message and a knock at the door. The Service Log is that record, tidied up and written down so that you can read it before you write rather than after.

Some entries are about places. A square in W8 that most visitors to Kensington never find, a street in Chelsea made for an early table, the first drink of a Shoreditch night, a City hotel whose lobby sits beneath a banking hall's dome. They are written for someone who is actually in that part of London, or about to be, and they name only what the desk is confident is still there. Where a restaurant or a bar might not last, the entry says so, and the desk names the current room when you write.

Other entries are about the desk itself: why every booking is confirmed in writing, how long an offered name is held before it is released, and how to describe an evening when you have no companion in mind. They explain the procedure the way a good reception would, plainly and in the order it happens, including the parts where the answer is no.

Nothing in the log replaces a message. Each entry links onward to the district it describes, to the kind of evening it suits and to the companions in the register who know that ground best. When you have read enough, write to the desk with the day, the start time, how long and where, and Cordelia answers in writing. The fees are one published ladder everywhere, from £250 for an hour, listed in full on the rates page, and the fee goes to the companion herself, in person, on arrival. New entries are added to the log as they are written, in the same voice and to the same standard.

Everything in the log

10 guides in Service Log

016 min readA minute off the High Street, three centuries behind itLaid out in the 1680s and still arranged round its private garden, Kensington Square sits a minute from the High Street and is missed by most visitors to W8. What it is, who lived there, and how to walk it.Read it

026 min readAn early table on the quietest street in SW3Walton Street runs from the Knightsbridge side down to Draycott Avenue, small restaurants facing shuttered boutiques. Why it suits an early table, what its rooms are like and how the walk home goes.Read it

Violetta, companion in the City of London, London

037 min readFive o'clock on the highwalk, and three better ways outWhen the Barbican's conference halls empty, most delegates follow the crowd down to Moorgate. The highwalks lead elsewhere: west to Smithfield, south to St Paul's and the river, and into an evening worth keeping.Read it

047 min readInside the zone or out of it: the charge, the clock and the evening carThe charge runs by the day, not the hour, and only some of the desk's districts sit inside it. Which ones, when the cameras stop counting, and why a car hired for the evening is often the dearer choice.Read it

Patricia, companion in Belgravia, London

056 min readNothing settled aloud: the case for a booking in writingThe desk never settles an evening by voice. What a written confirmation holds, what it protects on your side of the door and on hers, and why an open maybe is never kept for anybody.Read it

Milena, companion in South Kensington, London

067 min readStart with the evening, and let the desk find the nameHaving no name in mind is a perfectly good place to start. Describe the concert, the long supper or the late walk, and the desk puts two companions forward with a plain reason for each one.Read it

076 min readThe Cenotaph on the second Sunday of NovemberEach November the National Service of Remembrance closes Whitehall and the roads around it. When to arrive, where to stand for the silence and the march past, and how to spend the quiet afternoon afterwards.Read it

087 min readThe first drink on Redchurch Street, and everything after it on footOf all the streets in the east, Redchurch is the one the desk names most often for a first drink after ten. Why it works, how to move on without queues or a taxi, and who to walk it with.Read it

096 min readThe short hold: what happens between the offer and your yesWhen the desk offers you a companion, it keeps her hour open for a short, written window and then releases it. How long that window is, why it shrinks late at night, and how to ask for more.Read it

Luna, companion in Bank and Monument, London

106 min readUnder the glass dome on Threadneedle StreetA Victorian bank's head office turned hotel, its lobby beneath a stained glass dome, a short walk from the Bank junction. What it is like to stay there, and how still EC2 becomes once the offices empty.Read it

Your turn

One line is enough

Write the district, the hour and the number of hours. What comes back has a name in it, a time in it and a figure in it, and nothing moves after that.

WhatsApp the desk Telegram