Same-day appointments in London

Yes, I do take same-day appointments, and I would rather say so in the first line than make you read down the page for it, because if you are typing this into a search box at eleven in the morning you already have a fairly specific afternoon in mind and what you want from me is a yes or a no.

Not every day, not every week and certainly not every month. The days I am taking them are on the calendar below rather than in a sentence somewhere, because a sentence goes stale within a week and I would end up telling you something that stopped being true on Tuesday, whereas the calendar is the same diary I work from and I am the only person who edits it.

Why it costs less than a booked session

The rate for a same-day is lower than my usual one and the reason is not that you are getting a smaller version of me, it is that you are getting a different thing altogether. A session that is booked properly is planned: we talk beforehand, sometimes over weeks, I learn how you respond and what you are actually asking for underneath what you managed to put in the form, I build the thing around you and I set the room up for it. That is where most of the work lives and it is what I am really charging for.

A same-day has none of that in it. You arrive, we play, and it is very good, but it is play rather than something made for you, and I would rather price that honestly than charge you for planning I did not do.

There is no rate card on this website and there is not going to be one, because what I charge depends on what we are arranging. What I will tell you is the shape of the market, which is that you are not seeing anybody professional in this country for under £250 to £300 an hour, and that a same-day hour with me sits below what I ask for a planned one. A deposit of fifty per cent by bank transfer confirms the hour, exactly as it does for everything else I do, and the rest is paid in person.

What is not included, so you are not disappointed at the door

The heavy rubber, the latex encasement and anything that has to be fitted or set up are not part of a same-day as standard. Those cost more per hour, they need me to have prepared, and at four hours' notice the honest answer is sometimes no. Ask in your message and I will tell you whether that particular afternoon allows it rather than leaving you to find out on arrival.

How one of these actually works

• Pick a day on the calendar. It opens my enquiry form with that date already in it, so you are not typing it out again.
• An automatic email comes back to you straight away with the terms and what to send. That one is a robot and it says so.
• The deposit goes over by bank transfer with the hour you want as the payment reference, so I know which slot you mean without a conversation about it.
• Once it lands, the hour is yours and comes off the calendar. My number comes to you and anything explicit, anything you will not do, and the address are settled there.

That is deliberately about four messages from start to finish. The whole appeal of a same-day is that it does not need the long, careful, personal build-up, and if I made you do one anyway there would be no point offering it.

Why I am doing this at all

Most people in this work do not take same-day bookings and there are perfectly good reasons for it: the screening, the planning, the deposits and the simple fact that a diary booked three weeks out does not have holes in it. I am in an unusual position at the moment. I have just moved to London and gone full time for the first time in fifteen years, and there are weeks in the early part of that which are not yet full.

I am also building the play space, and that is not a modest undertaking. The first five items in it came to four thousand pounds and there are still several thousand pounds of equipment, decor and styling to go before it is the room I have been describing to people for years. So I would rather fill a quiet Tuesday than protect the principle of never doing so, and every same-day session between now and then is going directly into that room.

It will not last. Once the weeks fill up the calendar above simply stops having days on it, and I am not going to pretend otherwise to make it sound more urgent than it is. If a day suits you, take it.

Common questions

How long is a same-day session?

An hour or two hours. That is what these are, and it is deliberate: a same-day appointment is not the shape of booking that runs half a day, because that kind needs planning and planning is the thing a same-day session does not have.

Where do they happen?

In my own space in London, and only there. Same-day works because the room is already mine and already set up; it does not travel, so an outcall or a Manchester visit is always arranged in advance.

Can I ask for the heavy rubber, or the Sybian?

Ask, and I will tell you honestly whether the day allows it. Anything that has to be fitted or set up is more per hour and it is not standard on a same-day, so the answer depends on what else is in the diary that afternoon rather than on whether I feel like it.

The day I want is not on the calendar. Is it worth asking?

For that day, no, and I would rather tell you that than have you wait on a reply. A day that is not marked is a day I am not taking same-day bookings on, and the calendar is edited by me and nobody else, so it is accurate on the morning you are reading it.

If you have never done any of this before, start here instead and book properly, because a first session is one of the few I would genuinely rather plan. If you are a woman or a couple, this and this are yours, and the machine everybody asks about is here.

Ask about a same-day