MAPIC Day 2: Flaming bottles and lost shoes in tacky heaven

Guest blogger Nicky Richmond is still at MAPIC

When we left off last night we were on our way to two agents' parties, conveniently located right at our own hotel. How thoughtful.

So we get to the first. You've all been to parties like this. Groups of suits chatting together in little circles. No-one breaking out of their little group. You, wondering whether you had accidentally put on your invisibility cloak.
It was the tail end of the party. A drably lit room, with a small bar and a harassed waiter struggling to keep up with the drinks requests. No food, unless you count a few peanuts on a table. No-one spoke to us. And we don't even look like lawyers.

Cut to agent's party number 2. Warmly welcomed at the door by the very professional staff, we were greeted by decent music, a great buzz, bartenders juggling with flaming bottles and 20 pole dancers (ok, I made the last one up) But really. The contrast could not have been greater.

I had to play Consiglieri in an attempt to retrieve my client's shoe. I failed. Later his mobile phone was removed from his person. Anyone who knows the legendary Richard "one shoe" Leslie will know that this has just doesn't happen to him.

My favourite snippet of the day from a passing Dutchman in the Exhibition Hall "it's extremely easy to work with English people, as long as they're not your boss". How very dare he? We British are the model of reasonable behaviour and fair management. Aren't we?

We had a great time on the Cafe Forum stand (no, me neither); our photos taken for a mock magazine, followed by pictures from a slightly odd caricaturist who sang the praises of Benny Hill and talked about the great relationship between the French and the English - has no-one told him? Cocktails were served in flashing glasses accompanied by bright pink food and as much as were having a whale of a time in tacky heaven, we had to put away our childish things and go to the grown-up stands.

I felt very sorry for the Naomi Campbell lookalike in the Santa mini-dress outfit at the back of the shopping centre connections stand - and the man on his own in the Doha Shopping Centre stand. The stands were either mobbed or dead. Some stands you just walk past really quickly - car-crash stands - places you will never want to visit, manned by people with dead eyes, glued to their Blackberries. The Place To "B" was still entirely deserted.

CBRE in particular was constantly busy - with a massive presence and a well designed stand, this was how it should be done. Generally, the agents' stands were the most buzzy -no real sense of the drama in the wider economy and the train just rattling on as usual - at least on the surface...

For us, the point is to talk talk talk - information gathering, meeting clients and contacts and just generally getting ourselves about. It sounds random, but you never know. Given that we pulled off a nine-figure deal last year through a MAPIC meeting, we know that it's worth going round just that one more time and perhaps speaking to that rather dull-looking person, who then turns out to have quite a lot to say, as well as being fantastically well-connected.

And now off to Foreman Roberts drinks at the Morrison's Bar. It could get messy. I do hope it does. Laters.

Nicky Richmond is joint managing partner and head of property finance at Brecher.