I am a mongrel, though not a true one
When I was at Junior School we all wanted to be able to call ourselves a true mongrel – the idea was quite current
Mongrels were highly desirable. Only effete snobs with more money than sense would want to pay out good money for a dog. Certainly not for one that was overbred, inbred & temperamental. Not when there were plenty of dependable, unpretentious, friendly mongrels looking for a good home
In terms of us children, a true mongrel was one who could claim English, Welsh, Scottish & Irish blood. I came close but, although I was conceived in Snowdonia, nobody in the family could think of any Welsh ancestors
My grandsons, these days, might quite like to call themselves mutts – I have not asked
Their father, sometimes, likes to close down an argument by saying: I am right because I am the wog in this family
He tells me that he had never heard of it until I mentioned what ‘everybody knew’ – also when I was at junior school – that WOG is an acronym for Wily Oriental Gentleman
The authorities – OED, Chambers - dispute this & all other acronymic etymologies, without coming up with any convincing one themselves, though all are agreed that it was first used of Arabs
In my childish mind at least I was sure it meant Chinese – it somehow linked well with the Yellow Peril which used to scare people so much so long ago
My son in law is neither Arab nor Chinese, but he does count as oriental
There was also a well known saying: Wogs begin at Calais. Wikipedia says that this was first used Of Winston Churchill by a fellow MP in 1949
It was not a statement of fact, but a way of pouring scorn on people with a certain cast of mind or small minded set of beliefs. The sort who, faced with a dish of Spaghetti Bolognese, would say: I can’t eat this foreign muck; who was more afraid than Dracula of garlic: Ugh! The Paris Metro reeks of it
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