Toast to Australia

On a lovely sunny, sort of, Sunday in June we had tickets to Toast Festival, the Australia day (there is a Saffa and NZ day too). It's as close as we get to the real Australia day, and as for the trimmings it did stack up.


We were there with a friend from work Jon and his wife Neoma, who is also an Adelaide gal and now also works with us too.

Us toasting to Australia.

Mark and I got there early to make sure we didn't miss out on the Polo match, a bit of England vs Australia going on there. So we started with champagne and strawberries, why not. Neoma and Jon, as I now have discovered, are notoriously late - yes even more so than me, I am either spot on time (most of the time...) or several hours late, so I can sympathise. By the time they had arrived the polo match was done and dusted, with each side scoring 3 goals (not sure if they call them goals) and we'd moved on to the food.

Yippee we scored..

We wandered round and eventually decided to eat from the Smiths of Smithfield stand, you may know the owner - Jon Torode - if you watch Masterchef, where we got yummy salt and pepper squid, roast lamb and chips. Jon Torode was there and cooking out front on the BBQ, as you can see in the picture. He commented on my fine choice of chips, not seeing that I had the salt and pepper squid in my other hand.

Jon Torode and the rather impressive BBQ

There was some wine tasting, but nothing particularily exciting so after Jon and Neoma joined us, we ate more, wandered a bit more, had some rather delicious and monstourous slabs of Pavlova, before positioning ourselves ready for a bit of Sneaky Sound Systems.

Super sized Pavlova, and it was two for the price of one!

By the time they were on, we were right up front. Miss Connie and Angus were brilliant, and I really enjoyed them, even better the second time around, as we saw them at the good ol' Sheperds Bush Empire a few months back.



Whew after a rather relaxing, but exhausting day, we had a couple of pints with Neoma and Jon before heading back home to Tufnell Park, it could have been a late one, but as Sunday is officially a school night it was not to be.