Escorts in the City of London, EC2, EC3 and EC4: who is close, and how soon
Ten past nine on a Wednesday, and Gresham Street holds almost nobody: two men in black tie walking away from a livery dinner, a cyclist, a night bus going the wrong way for everyone, and a woman in a dark coat who could be any lawyer heading home from a late meeting. Nobody looks at her twice, which is the whole art of an evening here. The City notices little after dark, but it has manners of its own, older and stricter than anywhere west of Temple Bar, and knowing them is what lets City of London escorts pass through it unremarked. Every name on the board lives west of the boundary, so she comes in from town, which means an hour or thereabouts from the office's yes, longer while the offices empty onto the roads, with her precise time sent as she sets off and each length listed on the rates.
On the ground
City of London in practice
Landmarks on the arrival slip
By postcode, never by nameEC2R 8AJ, EC2M 7QN, EC3A 7AB, EC3N 4AJ, EC2A 1DX.
Nearest stations
Walking timeBank, 1 minute. St Paul's, 5 minutes. Liverpool Street, 7 minutes.
Getting there
EC2, EC3, EC4Travel is included across Zones 1 and 2, and counted from the moment the hour is set rather than from when she leaves.
On the board
Nearest prints to City of London
Who works here
On the board in City of London
The six prints above are a first shortlist for City of London tonight. Any of the twenty eight on the who is free page can be asked for by name instead.
Note 02
Dressed for the district
The City dresses for work and does not apologise for it. On a weekday evening the streets between St Paul's and the eastern towers are dark suits, plain coats and sensible shoes, and anything louder reads as a visitor from somewhere else. The livery companies, more than a hundred of them, keep their own halls and their own dinners, and those run to black tie and sometimes white.
A companion who looks like a guest at a good business dinner goes unnoticed anywhere inside the boundary, and that is the look to ask for. Describe the evening when you write, a quiet table, a room upstairs, a function with a dress code on the card, and she will dress to match it. Understatement is the local accent; a well cut coat says more here than anything bright.
Note 03
A small world at the next table
Several hundred thousand people work in the City on a weekday, but they work in a handful of trades, and the trades know one another. The real risk to discretion here is not a hotel. It is a client two tables away in a restaurant where your firm entertains, or a colleague in the same lift at half past ten.
The etiquette follows from that. Choose a table somewhere you do not take clients, keep first names, and decide in advance how you will introduce her if someone you know stops by. A companion is simply your guest for dinner, and a guest needs no explanation. She takes her cue from you, and she will say plainly if something is not for her.
Note 04
Lobbies built for travellers
In a district made for business travel, a woman in good clothes crossing a lobby at nine in the evening is the most ordinary sight there is. By default she comes straight up to the room, and meeting downstairs instead is yours to ask for. Once the booking is fixed, the office needs the name on the reservation and the number of the room and little else, and no hotel hears a word about you from this side, since the office has no understanding with any of them.
Would you prefer that she skipped the lobby altogether? Say as much in your first message; she will then wait below until you come to fetch her. Either way, nobody behind a desk needs to hear anything more than that a guest is expected.
Note 05
The few who live here
Fewer than ten thousand people live in the City, in the post-war estates on its northern edge, in flats carved out of old warehouses and offices, and in a scattering of new towers. A private address in EC2, EC3 or EC4 is therefore a rarity, and the neighbours in a block like that tend to know one another by sight.
For a flat, send the flat number and which bell to ring, which spares her a doorstep spent reading names. A porter or a night desk is worth a word in the same message, and so is a preference for meeting out on the street.
Note 06
A place with its own rules
The City keeps customs of its own that most visitors never notice. It has a Lord Mayor, a different office from the Mayor of London, who lives at Mansion House. It has its own police force, separate from the Metropolitan Police. Silver dragons holding the City shield stand guard on the main roads where they cross the boundary, and the memorial at Temple Bar on Fleet Street marks where the City stops and Westminster begins.
None of that touches an evening directly, but it explains the mood. This is an orderly, watched, quietly ceremonial place, well lit and calm at night, where nothing rewards being conspicuous and everything rewards looking as though you belong. Between the offices, Wren's churches keep small churchyard gardens, and on a light summer evening a bench in one of them is as private a place to talk as anywhere in London.
Note 07
Ending the evening without an audience
Black cabs keep working Cheapside and the main streets late into the evening, so leaving is simple, and a car waiting outside a City building at eleven draws no attention whatsoever. The awkward moment, if there is one, is a crowded pavement outside a pub at seven, which is another reason escorts in the City of London suit the later hours.
The same unshowy manners carry into the streets next door: Bank and Monument at the centre of the old streets, Aldgate on the eastern edge where the City gives way to the East End, and Holborn beyond the western boundary among the lawyers.
From The Roundup
Two notes worth reading for City of London
Asked most often
City of London, asked and answered
What should she wear to dinner in the City?
How do I introduce her if we meet someone I know?
Should I come down for her or leave her to come up?
Does the City expect anything of a visitor after dark?
One zone either way
Next along from City of London
escorts in Bank and Monument
EC3, EC4Same ladder, same honest hour, one zone further across the map.
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.