BALLAD OF DAYS GONE BY

Remember days like this? Days where you and your best friend would sit all day drinking each other up in one of your bedrooms? Locked in a world of songs you knew every single word to, intertwined in dance routines you had tape recorded on TV that one time? Remember reading magazines until the spine was barely there because you had turned those crispy pages so many times that they were now limp and scattered all over your innocent mind? 

Remember how you would change personalities by changing into each others clothes, not only because it was fun but because you didn't have that many ''in'' clothes to begin with? Remember plaiting each other's hair and wearing the narrow neck of your top on your head pretending it was long hair? Remember using your Impulse or Charlie deodorant spray can as a microphone when you played Shell Road to Fame? Remember how you would eventually go inside after a long, hot afternoon playing ushenxe, black toti or duva, having only eaten peanut butter or polony sandwiches or samp and beans or even better, umfino or amanqina, washed down with mulberries picked from your neighbour's yard, the evidence of which was over your weekend shorts? 

Remember closing the curtains at the same time everyday to the sound of the opening credits of The Bold and the Beautiful? Remember reluctantly chopping onions, tomatoes or carrots training for one day when you would be able to cook properly? Remember the exhilarating thrill of seeing boys if, like me, you were in a girls school? Remember how your crush's name was all over your homework diary, your school bag, tippexed at the bottom of your school shoes and how you would stare at his school picture as if your breathing literally depended on it? 

The story in this shoot is so well told that it took me all the way back and actually made me miss being a teenager even though I hated every waking moment of it and all.  It's from a magazine I discovered on the net yesterday called Ballad Of , a London showcase publication that publishes the work of up and coming photographers, stylists, make up artists and models in that city.  The two girls on the cover of this issue are just adorable. 

The print magazine is available on order from the website, which is cool but doesn't give you a lot of meat to bite into, just the smell of it.  But it is totally appealing and if it wasn't sold out, I would buy this Ballad of Sarah-Lou.