The evening's second rush
Everybody knows about the rush hour at six. Fewer people notice the second one, which arrives just as the first is clearing and belongs to a different crowd entirely. The commuters are underground or already home. Their place on the roads is taken by the evening: theatre audiences heading for a half past seven curtain, diners converging on eight o'clock tables, hotel guests being driven from Knightsbridge to Covent Garden and back, and a steady tide of taxis and private hire cars all trying to reach the same few postcodes at the same few minutes.
The roads in the middle of the city were never designed for that pattern. Park Lane funnels into Hyde Park Corner, Regent Street and Shaftesbury Avenue meet at Piccadilly Circus, the Strand carries buses and cars in both directions, and Charing Cross Road runs straight through the theatres. Between about seven and nine, a car crossing the zone spends much of its time standing still. Below it, the Underground has emptied since six, trains are still frequent and seats are easy to find. For those two hours the platforms beat the roads, and the gap is wide.
How twenty minutes becomes forty
At most hours, a companion who starts in the same postcode as your hotel reaches the door in about twenty minutes, and one crossing the middle of the zone takes thirty to forty. Between seven and nine, the same journeys by car can double. A run from Knightsbridge to Fitzrovia that takes a quarter of an hour at eleven at night can take thirty five minutes at a quarter to eight, and there is no way of knowing in advance which of those you will get.
The desk does not gamble on that. During those two hours, arrivals are planned on the train and on foot, because a train journey plus a walk from the station is predictable to within a minute or two, and a car journey is not. Someone coming in from Paddington takes the Elizabeth line to Bond Street and walks. Someone coming from Chelsea takes the District or Circle line to Victoria and changes for Green Park or Oxford Circus. The quoted time is longer than the same trip at eleven, but it is honest, and it holds.
Why ten o'clock often lands sooner than eight
This part surprises people. A message sent at seven asking for somebody as soon as possible will often produce an arrival at around a quarter to eight, because every route is slow and the desk quotes the slow route honestly. A message sent at half past nine, for ten, will usually produce an arrival at ten exactly, because by then the curtains have gone up, the tables have been seated and the roads have quietly cleared.
There is roughly an hour, from half past nine to half past ten, when the middle of London is at its easiest to cross. The early rush has gone and the theatre spill, which fills WC2 again at around a quarter past ten, has not yet begun. A car across the zone at that hour is quick, the platforms are quieter still, and a companion who sets off at twenty to ten is at your door in W1 by ten with time to spare. If your evening has any flexibility at all, ten is the better hour to ask for.
Streets that seize, and streets that do not
Not all of the zone suffers equally. The worst of it sits around the big junctions and the theatre streets: Hyde Park Corner, Piccadilly Circus, Cambridge Circus, the Strand and the approaches to Trafalgar Square. Hotels on those roads, or reached only through them, feel the second rush most.
The back of the zone is kinder. Marylebone and Fitzrovia run on smaller streets, most of them away from the theatres, and an arrival there between seven and nine loses far less time than one in Covent Garden. Bloomsbury sits in between. The more of the route that can be walked, the less the hour matters, which is one reason the desk asks for the building rather than the district, a point made at length in the note on giving the building, not the district.
Planning around the two hours
There are three simple ways to take the sting out of them. Write earlier: two hours of warning covers most hotel bookings in the centre, and a message at five for eight leaves room to choose somebody who starts close to you. Ask for someone who lives nearby: a companion who can walk to your door is untouched by traffic of any kind. Or move the hour: half past six or ten o'clock both miss the worst of it, and ten o'clock, as above, is often the quickest arrival of the whole evening.
Whatever you choose, hotel and flat arrivals are quoted to the minute rather than as a window, and between seven and nine that minute already includes the slower journey. You are never told twenty minutes and left to find out it meant forty. The figures themselves do not move with the clock. An hour is £250 at eight exactly as it is at midnight.
Who beats the clock
Some of the women on the list barely notice the second rush because they live inside it. Samanta is based in Mayfair and is often free the same evening, which puts most W1 doors within walking distance. Liana lives in Marylebone and walks to most of her bookings, seldom going near a main road. Vanessa starts in Paddington, which sounds far until you remember that the Elizabeth line reaches Bond Street in a few minutes whatever is happening on the roads above.
All three are on the slender page of the index, which is incidental. What matters between seven and nine is where somebody starts, and the desk will always tell you plainly who is closest rather than who is most popular.
Cross filed: most of the names in this piece also sit under brunettes in the the index.