Gregg’s Sausage Roll Baby Jesus

You know Gregg’s sausage rolls are my favourite blog topic. I’ve talked before about how the humble pastry is used to establish ordinariness, citing Ed Sheeran’s Twitter team as the most skilled at carefully curating Ed’s ordinariness. So, I was amused when Gregg’s (the UK’s largest high street baker) made a joke about this belief in ordinariness.

We all buy into it. Literally. It’s a billion dollar industry and even bigger at Christmas. So why not replace the baby Jesus with a Gregg’s sausage roll in the nativity? It’s in the spirit of Christmas 2.0 after all.

Ordinary is Good

It’s possible to bend the minds of the buying public into believing that a celeb is really just one of us, as ordinary as anyone eating a Gregg’s sausage roll, but replacing the baby Jesus in the nativity scene in a Christmas advert? That’s sacrilege, treason, heresy, anti-Semitic, or whatever, isn’t it?

Probably, it’s all of those things, but we’ve only ourselves to blame by buying into this belief that the stars are as ordinary as we are because they tweet that they’re eating a Gregg’s sausage roll.

Spoiler Alert

What’s more shocking, that there is no proof Ed was eating a Gregg’s sausage roll when his team tweeted he was backstage at Victoria’s fashion show, or the baby Jesus sausage roll? Sorry if that’s a tough one.

Data Rules

All this knowledge about what we think is ordinary comes from the dreaded data, the figures that are automatically stored every time we buy anything. The data is then used to sway our decisions on what to buy next.

And what’s next is always being put in front of us, apparently. Apparently, we have a choice, we can either run or become what’s next. Really? Who’s doing this to us? Who decides what’s put in front of us? And who would want to become a Gregg’s sausage roll anyway? It’s our choice. We have been warned about what’s coming next. It’s our choice. Human sausage roll, or just say no.

So, Don’t Be a Human Sausage Roll

The best way to avoid ordinariness is to read Cy Forrest’s book, The Punished, available here.

Gin, a determined young woman angered by the way she’s been treated, wants to save the world. Jack, a teenage outcast, dreams of a better life. They both demand some kind of change as they start a journey into the rural south of England.

“Cy Forrest has crafted a story filled with intrigue and surprising turns and once the reader is introduced to the characters, there is no way they’d want to miss a moment with them. I was most attracted to Gin, a well-developed character, and readers will be interested to discover her subtle transformation from an effervescent young woman to one more mature and calculating, risking a lot for patriotism. The writing is awesome and the pacing measured. I enjoyed the dialogues, the well-developed setting, and the balanced and deft writing. The Punished is, without doubt, a work of great entertainment, a book with great psychological allure and emotional depth.”

“I came away with a new understanding of the world generally – which is one of the most wonderful things a book can do – namely how real lives get relegated to the past and what is remembered, whilst factual, barely scratches the surface of feeling what it was like to be one of these people in such extreme circumstances … We are fallible, partial and we see the world through our own filters. Added to that, forces are at work to deliberately obfuscate and bury the truth and ultimately, the full picture is forever out of our reach. However, this story allows one person to see a greater whole: the reader, which I think is an immensely powerful possibility.” – Cornerstones

Categories:

Kindle UK:

Kindle Store > Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Coming of Age

Kindle Store > Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Family Life

Kindle Store > Books > Literature & Fiction > Contemporary Fiction > Literary

Paperback UK:

Books > Fiction > Literary Fiction

Kindle US

Kindle Store>Kindle eBooks>Literature & Fiction>Genre Fiction>Coming of Age

Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Family Life

Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Coming of Age

Paperback US

Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Coming of Age

Books > Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Family Life

Books > Parenting & Relationships