David Guetta finished, the crowd went home, and the City of Skopje crews got out the brooms. Clearing the rubbish around the stadium and in the City Park went on until the early hours of the morning.

Mayor Orce Gjorgjievski wrote that the workers "with a great deal of effort and dedication made sure that what remained after the big celebration were the good memories, and that by morning the space was clean and tidy again". And he added a sentence worth keeping: "I extend sincere thanks to every worker who spent the night on the ground. Their labour, often far from public attention, deserves the respect of all of us."

That is a rare statement - a mayor who, after a concert with a world-famous name, talks about the people with the brooms rather than about himself on the stage. And it is accurate in every word: the work of municipal crews really does take place far from public attention, usually because when it is done well, there is nothing left to see.

The work that never enters the event's budget

And here is the part nobody usually counts. A big event has a price that gets published - production, artist, stage, security. It also has a second price, which rarely enters the calculation: a shift of workers on the ground all night, extra trucks, fuel, overtime hours, containers emptied twice over.

That bill is paid by the City, not the organiser - and it appears in none of the statements about what the spectacle cost. The next time somebody says an event cost zero denars, it is worth asking whether that zero includes the night shift around the stadium.

None of this is a complaint about the workers, or about the mayor who mentioned them. On the contrary - they are the only part of this whole story with neither a doubt nor an unknown sum attached. It is known exactly what they did and when, and by morning the space was clean. That is more than can be said for some other items in the same celebration.