Coffee for two at half past eight: how breakfast closes an overnight well

Count the ten hours backwards

An overnight on the ladder is ten hours, £1,800, and it ends when the ten hours do. That turns breakfast into simple arithmetic. If she knocks at eight in the evening, the booking closes at six in the morning, which suits a guest with a dawn flight and very few others. For breakfast at a civilised hour, move the start later. A knock at half past ten gives ten hours that finish at half past eight, with room for eggs, a second pot of coffee and the papers in between.

So tell Henrietta the breakfast time you have in mind when you book, rather than the arrival time you imagine is usual, and the desk works the knock out from there. It is the most useful sentence in any overnight request, and hardly anyone thinks to write it.

The card on the door handle

Most London hotels still use the breakfast card: a menu that hangs on the outside of the door, ticked the night before and gathered up by the night staff while the building sleeps. It is the surest route to a quiet morning. Tick two of everything you want, choose the delivery slot that fits the plan and hang it before you forget, ideally before midnight. The alternative is ringing down at seven while two people try to agree on eggs, which is nobody's favourite way to wake up.

If the room has a table by the window, ask for the tray to be laid there rather than set down on the bed. And order more coffee than seems reasonable. A second pot arriving twenty minutes after the first is the one extravagance of the morning that nobody ever regrets.

Choose food that can wait a few minutes on a tray while somebody finishes in the bathroom. Pastries, fruit, yoghurt, toast in a rack and scrambled eggs all hold well; a poached egg and a crisp rasher do not. If she has not said what she likes, ask the night before, when the card is on the bed between you. A companion who wakes to find her usual order already on the table has been paid a compliment without anyone making a speech.

Or down to the dining room

Some mornings deserve a proper room with white cloths and daylight. Going down to breakfast together is entirely ordinary in a London hotel: at that hour the dining rooms of the big houses are full of couples, colleagues, families and people reading alone, and a guest's guest at the table draws no more notice than a colleague would. If your rate covers breakfast for one person, the second breakfast is normally added to the room bill, and that is all it is, a line on the bill.

Choose the dining room when there is time for it. Breakfast downstairs takes the best part of an hour once you have been seated, served and poured a refill, so it suits a booking that ends at half past nine far better than one with twenty minutes left to run.

Some guests prefer to step outside for it. In Mayfair, The Wolseley on Piccadilly, a grand café in a former motor showroom, has made breakfast into something of a London occasion, and it is a short walk from the hotels around Green Park if the booking still has an hour on the clock.

The small choreography of a shared morning

Mornings are where good manners show, because nobody is performing any more. A few habits make them easy for both of you.

Breakfast people on the rota

Some companions are at their best before most of the city is awake. Nancy swims fifty lengths at the Oasis on Endell Street on most mornings, so seven o'clock is late by her standards, and she comes to the table glowing and ready to talk. Lucy runs along the river before her street is up and drinks her coffee very short; she is gentle company for a slow morning with the curtains half open. Nora sometimes starts her day at the flower market at Nine Elms long before dawn, and she will read the breakfast card aloud and tick it for you with great confidence.

Nancy and Nora are two of the four blondes on the rota, and Lucy belongs among the petite companions. Nancy lives in Covent Garden, which puts the Strand hotels and their breakfast rooms in her own neighbourhood.

The goodbye, on time

When the ten hours close, the booking closes, and a graceful ending is a short one: the last cup, a thank you, her coat, the door. There is no need to walk her down. A goodbye at the door of the room is the norm, and she knows her way to the lift. If the morning is going well and you would like it to continue, say so before the last hour begins, while there is still time for the desk to look at her day and give you an honest answer.

Your own checkout runs on a separate clock. Most London hotels want the room back by late morning, and a late checkout is best requested the night before, when reception can see the whole of the next day. Then the rest of the day is yours, and the figure for next time is waiting on the rates page.