Number: #1
Name: Baltic Market, Liverpool
Trade: Street food
Visit date: 22.06.19
With: Tobin, James, Dave et al
Bought: Steak frites & salsa verde

Number: #2
Name: Independent Label Market, Kings Cross
Trade: Music
Visit date: 13.07.19
With: Wist and Lol
Bought: –

Number: #3
Name: Canopy Market, Kings Cross
Trade: Food and design
Visit date: 13.07.19
With: Wist and Lol
Bought: Two birds gin

Num: #1
Type: Pea and Leek
Brand: Soupologie
Score: 3/5

#1.
Thriva Advanced Blood Test
Thoughts: Amazing UX, right up until you have to take a sample – and then the whole thing is slightly undermined by the fact that you have to stab yourself and then milk your own finger. But the results are laid out in an easily understandable way, and its interesting to find out a bit about how everything is working in your body.

#2.
23andme Ancestry & Health
Thoughts: Easy to sample and send off. Like Thriva a really easy experience. But the turnaround time is crazy long – 6 weeks – so the initial excitement has worn off by the time your results arrive. Again, results are interesting to read, although most are based on likelihood (‘people like you are more likely to…’) so there were lots of traits in there that I didn’t recognise. It’ll improve with time – it’s a really interesting product.

#3.
Vitl – Essential One Personalised vitamins
Thoughts: Hard to work out the different between all the vitamins packages. But this one looked pretty good, and ticked off the vitamin deficiencies that were flagged in the Thriva test. Nicely designed and cool to have your own name on a vitamin pack in your medicine cabinet.

Last year’s Folk Traditions challenge was great fun, but it put a lot of pressure on getting to places on a particular day. And with a young family, that kinda thing won’t be feasible this year. So this year, my 30th year, I’m going to attempt 3 challenges that are a little closer to home, and have less time pressure.

30 Health trends, fads, classes and treatments
Hitting 30 is as good a time as any to take a look at my health, and explore some of the latest or popular health products, programs, classes and services out there today. Some of them will be out there and new to the world, some of them will just be new to me.

30 Markets
The plan is to visit 30 markets – of all types and flavours. Antiques markets, food markets, car boot sales, street markets and indoor markets. All sorts. I won’t count ones I’ve looked around before (unless there’s a particular pop up market on or something.) And if I buy something, I’ll make a note of it here too.

30 Soups
I don’t have soup very often. But whenever I do, I always think “Why don’t I have soup more often?” So here we go. No real rules around it – equally accepting of canned soup, just as much as restaurant or café. Hot, cold, it doesn’t matter. But I need to get a breadth of flavour – it can’t be the same Pret tomato soup every time (although that is delicious.)

It felt like I found my groove again this year.

’29 Folk traditions’ was one of the hardest I’ve had to do – because most of them only happen once a year, and they generally cluster around pagan holidays – but I finished it (and actually could’ve done a couple of extras).

Here are my top 5 folk traditions:

’29 Hot sauces’ started well, faltered, and then I picked it up again in the closing weeks and months. I’m glad it happened that way, because the best thing was being able to compare them against each other.

Here are my top 5 hot sauces:

’29 Salads’ didn’t happen. It’s the second time I’ve attempted it, and the second time I’ve failed. I think I need to think through its parameters again before trying it a third time.

Like every year before, here are the 29 photos that I think best sum up the year.