In the movie Calamity Jane, on her return from Chicagy on the Deadwood Stage, it’s star Doris Day sang:-

“Just blew in from the windy city,

The windy city is mighty pretty,

But it ain’t got what we got, no sirree…..”

Despite going on to extol the big city’s tall buildings, minstrel shows, dancing girls, fountains and parks, to Deadwood’s town folk she re-assured them her head hadn’t been turned. Consequently, preferring living in her home town of lawless shit kickers, drunks and sexually deprived cowboys than among highfalutin folk from Chigacy***.

*** – She’d been to Chigago, but when it came to pronunciation of American cities the Deadwood education system failed Calam.

Frank Sinatra sang of Chicago**** as his kind of town, contradicting the feisty ‘lady’ who drove the Deadwood Stage, Calam not sharing old blue eyes’ opinion on the Illinois city being a suitable place to make home. The brash Deadwood lass instead preferring to reside in the wild west den of iniquity she called home…… Never mind…… Each to their own I suppose.

**** – To clarify, Sinatra didn’t sing of this love for Chicago in the movie Calamity Jane – He wasn’t even in the movie. His tribute refrain about the windy city, written by Jimmy Van Heusen & Sammy Cahn, set in mid 20th century America, was part of the movie Robin & The Seven Hoods’ musical score.

I think what I attempted to relay above, in an inadvertent and unnecessarily wordy way, was although I made a tenuous connection between Sinatra and Doris Day’s refrains about Chicago, they’re not linked in any way……. Tune in tomorrow for another episode of GJ Strachan cuts a short story long!

The reason I introduced this narrative with lyrics from the song Just Blew In From The Windy City was, at time of writing, I’d only just returned from a windy city. A metropolis not in the state of Illinois, though, moreover a city over the pond in the English kingdom of West Yorkshire. Admittedly, it ordinarily doesn’t share Chicago’s nickname, but there’s little doubt it would’ve been an apt moniker for my home town today.

With several of my ever receding hair strands now residing in the neighbouring city of Wakefield, my comb to hide as much as my balding pate as possible has taken on an ever bigger challenge.

It’s a shame the gusts can’t provide a similar removal service on my back hair, which is presently so thick its taking on a consistency of velcro. A fate that’s resulted in removing clothing from my torso being at best uncomfortable; and at worst I’m being skinned alive!

My journey back from the windy city of Leeds was significantly less fraught than Calam’s from Chicagy. There were no confrontations with bloody thirst injuns, although even if we’d been ‘cut off at that pass’ they’d have struggled to get my scalp after today’s breezes.

Consequently, it was a relatively calm journey back to casa Strachan. That being said, my wife Karen looked a bit tense as we drove through the East End Park and Halton Moor areas!!