Blondes, four shades from golden to caramel
Four women here are blonde and no two of them are the same colour, which is the first thing to say about a grouping this small. Golden, honey, caramel and a long wavy blonde that people describe afterwards without quite being able to name it. They are set out below with their heights, their eyes and the districts they genuinely work.
Between them they cover four very different evenings, from a dance programme in EC1V to a garden theatre under the trees in NW1. The colour of anybody's hair decides nothing at all about how a night goes. The postcode decides rather more, and the north postcodes index is the better place to start if you already know where you are staying.
Blondes, panel by panel
Who they are
Cindy wears hers long and wavy, stands 168 cm and slim with blue eyes, and builds an evening in Angel around a curtain on Rosebery Avenue. Nancy is golden blonde and blue eyed at 170 cm and curvy, anchored at St Pancras where the district improves once the last departure has gone.
Nora is honey blonde with hazel eyes, 166 cm and athletic, and works the village up in Hampstead. Thea is caramel blonde, green eyed, 165 cm and curvy, out by the park in NW1 where the gates shut at dusk.
The two with blue eyes
Cindy and Nancy are the only two women on the whole list with blue eyes, which is worth knowing if that is what brought you here and worth ignoring entirely if it is not. They are otherwise not much alike. One is twenty six, slim and precise and spends her sentences sparingly; the other is thirty, curvy, soft and exact. Four years, two very different evenings and a stretch of the Northern line between them.
Choosing between the four
Pick Cindy for an evening with a curtain in it. Her night is built around Sadler's Wells, twelve minutes downhill from the station at Angel, and she is at her best at the quiet table afterwards, talking about the dance for exactly as long as you want and not a minute longer. Pick Nancy if you are arriving by train or would like a reading room before a long dinner: she starts at the British Library, a short walk along the Euston Road from the platforms, she is the eldest of the four at thirty, and her usual booking is the four hour dinner date.
Nora is the outdoor choice, a walker who swims in the open all year and wants an early start in NW3, particularly in winter, with a low ceilinged pub that plays no music and the heath ten minutes beyond it. Thea wants daylight left when she begins, so that the rose gardens on the Inner Circle are part of the evening rather than a rumour of it, and she sets the gentlest pace of the four.
Where they are, and where they are not
Between them the four run from Angel down into EC1V, across to St Pancras, up to the heath and out to the park. That puts a blonde within easy reach of most hotels on this site, though none of the four is anchored on the far hills in N6 or N10, and a guest staying up there should allow for the journey when choosing.
Where to look next
If colouring is what brought you here, auburn and red is the neighbouring grouping and runs to three. If it was the build rather than the hair, Nora appears again under toned and athletic and both Nancy and Thea under curvaceous, while Cindy is one of the ten on slim and slender. The full list is arranged by district, and every name on it carries the same rates ladder.
Other shortlists
The sign stays lit
Give the desk an hour and a street, and the rest of the night is arranged quietly, anywhere from the lock at Camden to the Broadway on the ridge.