Say which Canary Wharf you mean: name the exit, not the station

Three buildings answering to one name

Canary Wharf is the name on three different stations, and they are separate buildings. The Jubilee line station lies under Jubilee Park, a long vaulted ticket hall whose glass canopies rise out of the planting above it. The Elizabeth line station sits beneath Crossrail Place, the timber latticed building moored in the North Dock. The DLR station is inside Cabot Place at the western end of the estate, under a glass roof of its own. Each has its own entrances, its own ticket barriers and its own idea of where the exit is.

Between them is a walk of four to seven minutes, depending on the pair. Jubilee line to DLR is about five minutes through the malls. Jubilee line to Elizabeth line is six or seven, across the estate and over the Adams Plaza Bridge. DLR to Elizabeth line is about five. Nobody changes between them by accident, and nobody who writes 'meet me at Canary Wharf station' has yet said which one.

Why 'the station' fails as a meeting point

A first meeting has one job before any other, which is that both people arrive at the same place. In this part of London, Canary Wharf is where that most often goes wrong. One person waits at the top of the Jubilee line escalators, the other at the Elizabeth line barriers two buildings away, and ten minutes pass with each of them certain the other is late.

The Jubilee line makes it worse, because it has several ways out: canopies up into Jubilee Park, passages into the malls, and exits that surface on different sides of the estate. Tell somebody to meet you at the exit and you have given them a choice of half a dozen.

The fix is simple and costs one extra line in a message. Name the line you are arriving on, then name a place outside that station which cannot be mistaken for anywhere else.

Four meeting points that cannot be mistaken

Arriving by Jubilee line: ride the escalators up and out under the glass canopies into Jubilee Park, and wait on the park side, not in the ticket hall. It is open ground, and a person standing there can be seen from every path into the park. On a wet night, step back under the canopy and say so in a message.

Arriving by Elizabeth line: come up into Crossrail Place and walk to its south end, where the Adams Plaza Bridge leaves for the estate. The foot of the bridge is a single, obvious spot, and from it everything on the estate is a short walk south.

Arriving by DLR: come out into Cabot Square and meet by the fountain. The square is small enough that two people in it will find each other, and the fountain is the one thing everybody already knows. It is also the prettiest of the four, which is not the point but is not nothing either.

In any weather and at any hour: a hotel lobby, named by hotel. It is lit, staffed, warm and open long after the malls have shut. For anything starting after about ten, this desk prefers a lobby to all three stations.

What one message should contain

Four things, in this order. The line you will arrive on. The meeting point, named as above. The time, to the minute rather than 'around seven'. And one detail that identifies you: a coat, a scarf, the colour of an umbrella. That last one feels unnecessary until the square holds fifty people at ten past seven, all of them in navy.

The desk sends the same in return, with a line when she is five minutes away. If either of you is running late, the message goes through the desk, which passes it on at once, rather than being lost in a text between two numbers that have never spoken.

If the plan is to meet at your own building rather than a station, the address needs more than a street number, and the note on Wood Wharf's towers sets out the four lines to send.

The first ten minutes

A station is a good place to begin an evening precisely because it is neutral. Nobody is on home ground, and the first minutes happen on foot, which is easier than across a table. From each of the four points above there is somewhere to walk to within five minutes: the park, the dock edge, the roof garden on top of Crossrail Place while it is open, a table on Canada Square.

That is why the quiet version of the girlfriend experience so often starts at a station. Nothing is staged, nothing has been reserved that cannot be changed, and the first half hour can be spent deciding what the evening is going to be. Two hours at £500 is the usual shape, and three at £700 when there is a table in the middle.

Three who are easy to find and easy to meet

On the petite column, three are particularly good at a first meeting in a busy place. Jasmin tells you exactly when she is close, and is interested enough in the old docks to turn the walk from the station into a short history of the water under your feet. Rosa can be located in any square by her laugh, which carries a remarkable distance, and she decides within a minute whether the evening is going well and is rarely wrong. Lucy is the opposite of loud, slow to speak and content with a pause, and the right choice when the first ten minutes need to be gentle.

The walk times from every platform on the estate are on the Canary Wharf page, and the quieter streets west of it on Limehouse. Tell Maude which line you are coming in on and she will name the meeting point in the confirmation.