28 Hours Later: life as an Olympic zombie as the Games wind down

As the crowds slip away and the noise abates in Paris, it is hard to come to terms with the dissipating spectacle

- Stephen McMillan

Handball à droite, volleyball à gauche." 'H For 16 days the volunteer directing crowds outside the South Paris Arena was the soundtrack to my waking hours, his megaphoned voice echoing round the Place de la Porte de Versailles and into my seventh-floor hotel room 150 metres away across the square.

He would start at 8am. An hour earlier the convoy of gendarme trucks would have arrived, each van feeling the need to alert the entire 15th arrondissement to its arrival with a blast of its siren. They would set up their roadblocks, buy their croissants and spend the day flexing their muscles to passing Parisiens.

La Police Nationale would show up around the same time and before long the tooled-up squaddies would be pacing up and down outside the venue entrances, too. Cafes did a roaring trade all day long catering to a constant stream of arriving and departing handball and volleyball fans, clad in national colours, draped in flags, singing songs. By mid-afternoon Monsieur le Megaphone was usually leading the crowds in a rendition of Joe Dassin's Les Champs-Élysées and after 9pm everybody seemed pissed. It was all utterly wonderful.