Beyond the M25: how the office books a travel companion in London
This is the plan for evenings that do not stay inside Zones 1 and 2. It covers an airport hotel before an early departure, a train out to a city where you have a dinner and nobody to have it with, and a few days away where the point is having decent company at breakfast as much as at eight in the evening. If you want a travel companion in London for a trip that leaves it, this is the plan.
It is arranged differently from everything else on this board. Nothing is confirmed on a phone call at midnight. The office works out the journey, the hours and the figure first, puts all three in writing, and only then is the trip a booking. The weekend figure is quoted rather than printed, because two days shaped around your plans is not a rung on a ladder.
On the board
Suited to beyond the m25
Note 02
Airport hotels and early flights
The most common version of this plan is the least exotic. You are flying at seven, you are staying out by a terminal, and the evening before is the dead hour nobody plans for. Those bookings start at three hours with her travel counted inside them, and the office gives you an honest arrival window rather than an optimistic one.
Paddington is the zone that handles this best, because the fast train from the west lands there and two of the women on the board live within a few streets of the platforms. A late arrival is a normal evening to them rather than an inconvenience.
Note 03
Out of town for a night
A dinner in another city, a wedding you would rather not attend alone, a site visit that ends with a hotel bar. She travels with you or meets you there, whichever is simpler, and the fare both ways is worked out before anything is agreed and given to you as one figure alongside the hours.
She books her own return leg if the trip is short, keeps her own room if that is how you would prefer it, and neither of those adds anything to the arrangement. Say which you want when you write.
Note 04
Several days
Longer trips are quoted rather than priced from the ladder, and the quote comes in writing before you commit to anything. It sets out the days, the hours inside them, the travel and the total. Nothing about a trip is agreed by implication.
Practicalities that matter more than people expect: how much of the day she is actually with you, whether the evenings are yours alone or shared with colleagues, and who is at breakfast. Answer those three in your first message and the quote comes back quickly.
Note 05
The east side of the same plan
Not every journey goes west. Canary Wharf sits next to a small airport that people fly out of at unsociable hours, and an evening there before a morning flight is a booking the office takes regularly. The run east takes real time from the middle of town, so it is planned into the evening rather than rushed at the end of it.
Note 06
Four who travel well
Sonya has travelled more than anybody else on the board and very little rattles her as a result, which is worth a great deal on a day that goes wrong. Laura collects facts about whatever city she is in and will have walked half of it before you are awake. Nora is the easiest company there is after a long flight and assumes nothing about the state you are in when you land. Violetta is formal for ten minutes and then not at all, and is very good in rooms where somebody is watching.
Availability is the whole question on this plan, so ask early. The who is free page carries an away note against every name and the office edits it by hand.
Note 07
What a day away actually looks like
Less glamorous than it sounds and better for it. A train with two coffees and a conversation on it. An afternoon where she reads and you work, in the same room or two streets apart. Dinner, which is the part the trip was booked for. Then a morning that starts slowly because neither of you has a commute.
The hours she is with you are the hours you agreed, not the whole calendar day. Most people overestimate how much company they want across three days and are relieved when the office says so before the quote rather than after it.
Note 08
What it is and is not
It is company for the hours agreed, in a different postcode from usual. It is not a package, a holiday sold by somebody else, or anything beyond her time and her conversation. Fees here are for exactly what they are for everywhere else on this site.
Documents, tickets and anything official remain yours to handle. The office arranges a companion and a schedule, nothing more, and it will tell you when a trip is not one it can staff properly. The rates page carries the ladder the shorter days are built from, and booking sets out the written confirmation every trip ends up with.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading first
More plans
Other ways an evening is arranged
Last strip
Say a name and an hour
Write in with a length, a time and the zone you are staying in, and a name from the board comes back with a window attached. That is the whole of the arrangement.