by Vera Shehadeh
Dear fellow St Andrean,
Could somebody please tell me why we have renamed our university cafe to ‘Eros’? Now there’s a question that I’m sure will baffle even the most experienced members of North Street’s ‘Asc’ team. Is it some sort of play on words which a) I am too slow-witted to pick up op on? b) I have blindly missed or c) has epically flopped? With a cheeky naked little Cupid poised over a provocative red lower case ‘r’, nothing is left to ambiguity: Cupid, brandishing bow and Coffea Arabica love potion infused arrow, is ready to aimé (sorry) at the next caffeine-virgin in line. There cannot be an alternative (and redemptive) meaning, rendering all this nothing more than an embarrassing faux pas. And a wildly inappropriate one at that. Inappropriate in more ways than one, for in what way (at all?) could the amenity of coffee provision be likened to lust? And no to those doe – eyed readers of mine, ‘eros’ does not paint the picture of romantic, pure, innocent love. They might just have gotten away with, ‘Amour’, (albeit in the guise of the latest perfume advertisement) because “everybody just looooves coffee!” The Greek word ‘eros’ equates to ‘sexual desire’ in English. Lust may be a better interpretation for this. Lust is an image of forbidden insatiable sexual desire that seems to be synonymous with the eros coffee slogan because it ‘keeps its customers coming back for more’ (a quote lifted straight from their welcome page!). With such a name, ‘Eros loyalty cards’ sound inescapably dodgy. Imagine also for one moment having to repeatedly clarify precisely what work at a suspiciously named ‘Eros cafe’ actually entails.
For weeks this plagued me, until one sunny afternoon (whilst I was revelling hopelessly in dissertation procrastination) a shaft of the cold Scottish spring (i.e. winter) sun caught a part of the Eros Cafe sign that had previously escaped me: The blood red strip next to the brand name was marked with a Fairtrade logo of slightly less lurid a colour and beneath this stood the phrase ‘passionate about Fairtrade’. In my eyes, this was the only redeeming chance Eros Cafe would be granted, and in the heat of the moment, it suddenly all made sense. This led me to do some proper, in depth research, which perhaps should have happened before embarking on this rather therapeutic rant. I visited the Eros coffee webpage properly this time, searching actively for some sort of explanation or etymology section – a full confession for naming a cafe ‘Eros’. But instead of making use of this most convenient segue into much safer territories – a leap, if you will, towards utter genius (and my defeat at that) I was left in a thick, grey, cloudy blur of doubtful speculation.
Perhaps, however, then I thought, the image of lust is exactly what was being likened to coffee drinking. If I were to allow myself to indulge in this this rather lewd analogy, it could at a stretch be understood, particularly upon considering our compulsive caffeine consumption and the fact that some have even labelled love as a drug. As students and as students in St Andrews in particular (with coffee shops lurking around and at every corner) we for the most part have fallen prey to frank caffeine addiction. For some of us that craving for the next caffeine fix may be too much to overcome and when we finally satiate ourselves we find that the effect of caffeine is to get our hearts racing, our minds ticking over on overtime as we catch ourselves day dreaming about the next occasion our lips will kiss the coffee cup in sweet and utter delight. It may even keep us up at night when we start fantasising about that hot, steamy cup of coffee waiting for us to sweep it off its base, lift that lid and sip, sip, sip. Mmm… delightful and… better than sex? Yet – something doesn’t quite… feel right… nope – For heaven’s sake -NO! We are a Saint-ly town, one with (almost) more churches and charity shops than car parking spots! A town where the only vandals are rubbish strewing, human sized sea gulls and the only real threat is to be ‘found by your match’, (and in the case that you are one of those head strong 30% of rebels that are skilled enough to evade being testimony to that statistic, the only other threat is to be hit by a golf ball).
Oh, and – it kind of sounds like a really long drawn out version of the plural form of the word error. In any case, apart from it being the most elegant of Freudian slips and it being memorable there just doesn’t seem to me to be a good enough reason to name a cafe ‘Eros’!!!
Much Love.