Burglar Alarm Britain

“Eros Security Systems” burglar alarm, Lambeth • After a couple of sensible mythological burglar alarms, we’re back to the bonkers ones. Eros? What on earth has Eros, Greek god of sexual love, got to do with security services? And anyway, this looks more like his boyish Roman counterpart Cupid, who was often portrayed as younger than the fully-formed teenage Eros. The resemblance to the Evening Standard‘s venerable logo makes me think this is a reference to the so-called Eros statue at Piccadilly Circus, that icon of tourist London. However, hard though it is to believe, what Wikipedia says about Alfred Gilbert’s piece of high Victorian camp is true. I’ve double-checked, and the statue that stands surrounded by the horrible hurly burly of Piccadilly is not intended to be Eros, but his butterfly-winged twin brother Anteros, who was associated with selfless and requited love (although he sounds like a half-baked deity the Greeks made up to impress the Romans). For all its faults, this silly, cheeky alarm is one of my all-time favourites – so naughty Cupid has worked his mischievous magic. • Spotted: Lower Marsh, Lambeth, London, SE1, England, 2007 • Politics: In the Labour constituency of Vauxhall

Above: Eros and his twin in London. Top left: “Eros Stringing His Bow“, a Roman copy of a Greek statue at the British Museum. Top right: ”The Angel of Christian Charity” aka “The Shaftesbury Memorial” (1893) by Alfred Gilbert at Picadilly Circus, colloquially known as the Eros statue, but actually depicting his selfless twin bro Anteros. Above: London’s familiar Evening Standard “Eros” logo (recently dropped from their masthead), which depicts the Piccadilly Circus statue and is therefore actually Anteros.