Paralympics Day 6 & 7 - Night & Day

So it was back to back shifts, last night and this morning and unbelieveably I am still awake!

My one and only night shift was last night (Wed) and I was once again on Stratford gate. Once I was on post there was a steady stream of punters slowly rising to the peak between 5-7pm for people arriving for the start of the swimming and athletics. After 7pm the numbers plummeted and in no time at all half of our lanes were closed and we were sent off for dinner. Upon my return at 8:30pm there remained one gate open on our half of the entrance which I manned for the final half hour.
This time scanning tickets I had several scans come up showing the ticket had been used before (the person had come into the park and then left and was attempting to return later which isn't allowed). For a few of these it was clear the people were just trying it on and they just slopped off. Some had either been told something incorrect or not listened to what they were told and we had to just get them escorted to the box office. A couple of them, just two cases, had geniune reasons for leaving the park and after checking their tickets and refering to the team leader we were able to sort these people out and let them through.
It can get quite heated trying to explain these rules and that we have to deny people access so I am glad I didn't have too many and that there was always professional backup (the paid, trained event stewards) available.

The fun part of the evening was saying goodbye to people at the end of the day and this eventually morphed into the Games Makers creating a 37 strong line of high-fivers for people to run along getting as many high-fives as they could. This was a great way to send people off home and everyone from 3 to 90 loved it.
So after a rubbish nights sleep I made my way back to the Olympic Park and onto to my next shift in Worlds Square next the worlds largest excuse for a restaurant (sorry I mean one of our proud Olympic sponsors - McDonalds).
Today was a mixture of access control (into the workforce area), meeting and greeting and crowd and queue control. World Square is one of those places that is quite quiet up to lunchtime and then crazy for the next couple of hours.
We had in Yasmin (aka Yasmagic) probably our best team leader to date. She had that great mixture of authority, fun, calm assurance, enthusiasm and care for the team. Oh and did I say she made me unofficial sub team assistant deputy leader!
So I am down to my final three days...   it'll soon be Christmas.