The long way home, a night out that ends on a towpath

The rooms worth the trip

Kentish Town has a two thousand capacity hall two minutes from a station that carries the mainline as well, and a balcony worth the stairs. One stop south, the old engine shed on Chalk Farm Road still holds sound in a way no new hall quite manages.

Over at Finsbury Park a theatre sits thirty seconds from the barriers, which is the shortest walk to a curtain anywhere up here, and Green Lanes runs north from it with the grills open long past midnight.

Who is good at a late night

Danielle heads for the left hand side of the balcony out of habit and will have listened to the support act on the way up. Michelle does not talk over music, which is rarer than it sounds, and is fully present between the songs. Laura gives the honest verdict on a restaurant rather than the polite one. Roxi is dry and economical at an hour when everybody else has turned sentimental, and Cindy is far more talkative coming out of a hall than going into one.

Getting home, which is rather the point

The Northern line runs late and runs through the night at weekends, Kentish Town has the mainline as well, and the night buses along Green Lanes are genuinely good. Up the hills it is a different story and worth settling before the last drink rather than after it. A companion who works the ridge will have worked out how you are both getting down before you have thought to ask, which is a small thing that saves an hour of a night.

How the three hours usually go

Meet an hour before doors so that nobody is shouting over anything. The show. Then a low table somewhere with a kitchen still honest at half past ten, which in NW5 is ten minutes uphill and worth every one of them. Then the walk, which on the canal side of Camden takes about thirty seconds to go quiet and is the part most guests remember afterwards.

If the show falls through

Headliners cancel, doors slip by an hour and the rain arrives at the exact moment you step outside. None of it spoils a booking that was about the company in the first place. Send one line and the desk suggests what to do with the same three hours instead: a late set at the Jazz Cafe on Parkway in Camden Town, a film at the old cinema on the Broadway in Muswell Hill, or just the late table and a longer walk. The hours and the figure stay exactly as they were, and nothing has to be booked again.

Arranging it

Give the desk the venue and the doors time and let it work backwards from there. Two hours at £500 covers a show and a drink after it if the night is a short one; three at £700 is the version with a table in it. Everything sits on the same ladder on the rates page, and the whole list goes out, though the profiles will tell you which of them would rather stand at the back than sit in a good seat.