Shorter than the guides and written closer to the hour. Each note takes one thing that happens on a late booking and says plainly how it tends to go.
Two in the morning has a reputation it has not earned. From this side of the booking thread it is one of the steadier hours of the night, and the reasons are mostly architectural.
Four is the hinge of the night. Almost nothing about the arrangement changes there, and almost everything about the body does, which is why the same booking works differently.
The most common thing that goes wrong with a late booking is not the booking. It is the last twenty metres, between a locked street door and a phone that is face down upstairs.
Most people decide too late, not too early. The window between ten and midnight is where a late booking is easiest to get right, and almost nobody uses it.
Feeling suddenly awake at one in the morning is not a reserve of energy. Knowing what it actually is changes what you should book, and how long for.
A late booking ends and then there is an hour that decides how the whole night is remembered. Almost nobody thinks about it in advance, and it is the easiest part to get right.
The busiest night of the week has a shape, and knowing it tells you when to write, what to expect of the roster, and why the same booking feels different on a Tuesday.
A booking written at the end of a long night tends to leave things out, and the things it leaves out are always the same four. Here is the version that does not.
Four small things done before she arrives change a late session more than any choice of format does, and three of them take under a minute.
The most misread format on the list. Eight hours holds sleep, quiet, a shower and hands that come back later, and reading it as one long session is how people talk themselves out of it.
Between a confirmed booking and a knock there are forty to sixty minutes. Spent well they improve the session; spent watching a phone they feel like an hour.
The rule ignores the hour, which surprises people. A first booking at one in the morning carries a deposit; the same hour for a returning client does not.
A four-hand booking at two in the morning is a different arrangement from the same booking at eight in the evening, and not only because of what it costs.
Some bookings start in the dark and end in daylight. That crossing is not a complication, but it changes what to order and when to start it.
Two lines settle it: where the room is, and what time you want someone at the door. The answer comes back with a name, an arrival window and the whole figure, whatever the clock says.