Tina, companion in Islington

About Tina

Small, fast and impossible to lose in a crowd, Tina is athletic, 158 cm, and carries more energy than people twice her size manage. Her espresso brown hair is long and usually tied back by the second hour, and her brown eyes miss very little. She dresses for movement, in clothes that look considered and turn out to be comfortable, and she has never once been the person holding a group up. At twenty six she is the most decisive woman here, which makes planning an evening with her take about four messages.

She is direct, cheerful and slightly bossy in a way most people find restful. She has the one language, English, and talks quickly, with a habit of finishing a thought properly before moving to the next one. Her enthusiasms are live music in strange buildings and long walks with a destination at the end, and she can join the two together without effort. She is very good with somebody who has arrived tired and does not yet know what they want from the evening.

Her Islington evening tends to be at the Union Chapel on Compton Terrace, five minutes from Highbury and Islington station, a working Victorian church that puts on concerts in its own pews under a rose window, which changes how music sounds in a way nobody expects the first time. She comes up from Covent Garden, the Piccadilly line to King's Cross and one stop on the Victoria, fifteen minutes on a decent evening. Afterwards the walk south down Upper Street takes twenty five minutes and passes everywhere worth eating in N1.

Concert nights suit her, and the twenty five minute walk south down Upper Street afterwards counts as part of the evening rather than the end of it. Tell the desk how far you are willing to go on foot; the rest of N1 is on the Islington page.

Asking for her

Tina works to a plan and likes to have one before the evening starts, so she will ask two or three questions and then propose something specific. Three hours at £700 is her usual booking.

Every figure she works to is already public on the board, and the order of the evening is set out on the booking page.

An evening with Tina

Seven on a cold Tuesday, and the doors of a church open onto a concert. The pews are hard, the ceiling is enormous, and a single voice up there does something no amplifier has ever managed. Tina will have checked what is on and will be sure about it, and she is usually right.

Out by ten, and she wants to walk. Down Upper Street with the restaurants still busy, past the theatre and the passage, all the way to the foot of the hill if you are up to it. Twenty five minutes and a conversation that gets better as it goes. There is a small table at the end if you want one, and she will have thought of that too.