First, the American Bar: half an hour under the pennants at The Stafford

The Stafford is not so much on a street as at the end of one. St James's Place leaves St James's Street, narrows, and seems to give up, and the hotel waits where it does. Traffic never comes this way by accident. The quiet starts about fifty paces in, and by the time you reach the door the West End has become a rumour.

The American Bar is the social centre of the house. Whatever the origin of its name, the room has kept the habit of mixing drinks properly, and it has something no other bar in the quarter can offer: its ceiling. Over the decades, guests have left things behind. Caps, club ties, badges, pennants, small models and signed photographs, hung wherever there was space until there was very little space left.

Green Park station is about three minutes away on foot. The lane lies inside St James's, in Zone 1, so a companion's car to the door is already part of her fee.

Beginning in a bar is the oldest sensible custom of the hotel evening, and it serves both people at the table. A bar gives the first minutes a structure. There is a drink to choose, a room to look at, a bartender to thank. Nobody has to invent a conversation out of nothing, and nothing important has to be decided until both of you know how the evening feels.

It also protects the plan. If a flight has landed late, or a meeting has left you with nothing to say, thirty minutes over a stirred drink resets the day. And if you would rather the evening stayed a drink and a conversation, it can. An hour at £600 is a complete booking in its own right, and in a room like this one it seldom feels short.

Companions prefer it, too. Arriving at a bar means arriving somewhere calm and public, where a first impression is formed across a table rather than across a threshold.

The keepsakes perform a quiet service for a first meeting: they give you something to talk about that is neither of you. Every object had a donor, and most had a story. A regimental tie. A cap from a club nobody at the bar can identify. A photograph signed with a flourish and a date. Guessing at the stories is a far better opening than any question about the journey in from the airport.

Ask the bartender about one of them. Staff in a room like this have heard most of the stories and enjoy telling the good ones. Below the ceiling, the drinks are serious. Order something classic and stirred, and let the bartender choose the spirit if you have no strong view.

In warm weather, ask whether there is a table outside. A summer drink in the open air, with old walls around you and the lane beyond, is one of the quieter pleasures of the quarter.

It runs the same way almost every time, which is precisely why it works.

The American Bar is not large, and residents are fond of it, so on some evenings there is simply no room. Keep a second bar in mind. Dukes is on the same lane, famous for its trolley and its extremely cold martinis; martini hour there has its own entry in this notebook. The Rivoli Bar at The Ritz is two minutes away on Arlington Street, and the Donovan Bar at Brown's is about five minutes north across Piccadilly.

Tell Octavia which room you settle on and your companion will go straight there. Changing the venue by message, even at the last moment, is entirely normal and costs nothing.

The Stafford's position makes the next move easy. The dining rooms of Jermyn Street are a few minutes east. The Ritz is almost next door. On a fine evening, a path at the end of the lane leads into Green Park beside Spencer House, and the Queen's Walk runs south under the plane trees as the lamps come on.

The bar is also a good place to finish. A last drink downstairs rather than upstairs lets a guest say goodnight in company, and some prefer to end an evening exactly where it began.

Jasmin regards the American Bar as the proper start to any evening in St James's, and she likes to hear the bartender's own favourite before she chooses hers. She is one of the petite companions on our list, bright, quick and delighted by a change of plan. Angelika, raven haired and dry, will pick one keepsake on the ceiling and have invented a complete biography for its owner by the second drink.

For an evening that begins here and moves to a table, the luxury dinner companion arrangement gives four hours for £1,800. For the bar alone, one hour is £600. The whole ladder, from the single hour upwards, is on our rates. A line through booking reaches Octavia, who confirms everything in writing.