The final tournament of our soccer season took place in Concord, the Concord Cup. We did ok, coming third in a five team round-robin, drawing our first two games 2-2 apiece, then losing 2-1 next morning to a team that would have won the tournament except that they picked up so many yellow cards against us that they ended up being docked points (even one of their parents got carded and sent away from the field). We then won our final game 4-2 to leave us feeling a bit better about things. Although at one point the games had to stop because a drone was flying over the field, and there’s a rule now that refs must stop the games for that. I liked that. The refs were pretty good overall, they had to deal with a lot of nonsense, and one came up to me and my assistant after one of our games and thanked us for being positive coaches with players who didn’t give them any hassle, much easier to work with than some of the others there. That was nice to hear. I generally had a good rapport with the refs (and with other coaches for the most part) and that’s one thing I’ll miss from coaching, though I probably couldn’t step into the field with the whistle myself, that’s a hard job. I did referee U6 games a long time ago, and I could barely handle that, I was getting tired even on tiny fields, and one kid stomped on my foot. Fun times. Anyway, down at the Concord Cup, during a break between games at the tournament we went back to our motel (which was the sort of place which characters on TV shows go when they are on the run from the cops or hiding from the mob), and while the others rested I went out and did a sketch of the fire station down the street. I like these old tiled-roof buildings. I like fire stations. When my son was very little we would take him to fire stations all the time to see the big fire trucks; simpler times. This sketch feels like ages ago, it was only in May. I’ve been over to Europe twice since then. I’m going to start posting my sketches from those trips next.