Tina turns up the volume in E14

Confidence has nothing to do with height, and Tina settles the question within a minute of arriving. She is 158 cm, athletic and compact, with long espresso brown hair and warm brown eyes that make direct, friendly contact. Her clothes are classic with a designer's hand in them: a navy wrap dress she altered herself, a crisp white shirt with a turned-up collar, heels chosen for walking between bars rather than posing in a lobby.

Confident, warm and easygoing, Tina is simple to be around and hard to forget. Her English is fluent and relaxed, with a big laugh never far away. Fashion design is a genuine obsession; she sketches on train tickets and reshapes half her wardrobe on an old sewing machine. Records are her weekend hunt, and she has opinions on pressings. Cocktails she treats as craft rather than fuel, and she can tell a proper sour from a lazy one in a single sip.

Her E14 evening leans on the live music at Big Easy on Crossrail Place, where live bands take the stage most nights and the room grows louder as the week goes on. She takes a table close enough to feel the bass, orders a bourbon sour and the first plate that looks messy and good, and turns every song into a conversation about the record it came from. When the set ends you walk down to the dock with your ears still ringing slightly.

Tina lives in Covent Garden, around twenty minutes from Canary Wharf, and short-notice evenings are genuinely fine. The E14 page lists hotels near Crossrail Place; the ladder is on rates, and your time goes to booking.