LOTS of middle-aged men in Glasgow buying top-of-the-range cycles to go out on the roads at the weekend. A reader heard one such cyclist declare: "My biggest fear is that if I died, my wife would sell my bicycles for what I told her they cost."

WITH the football season beginning, Rangers fans have been reminiscing on a fans' chat-room about supporters' buses. Said one: "On the old George's Cross bus to Kilmarnock, in agony for the loo as the traffic slowed down in Killie. Off the bus, ran into a restaurant, ran back out after a wee, caught up with another supporters' bus to get to the game. After the game caught a third bus back to Glasgow because I had lost all track of the guys, and no idea where they parked." He added, perhaps unnecessarily: "Cut down on the pints of heavy after that."

Any other tales from the buses?

THE big news story, sort of, yesterday was claims of an ostrich roving near the old Ayrshire mining village of Patna, with the SSPCA urging folk not to approach it. Inevitably a Fraser McLaren posted on social media: "Never mind the ostrich, ye should be staying back fae any burd in Patna - they're aw dangerous."

THE wildest news - no, not the ostrich - was claims that Rangers were about to sign former Manchester United star striker Robin van Persie. Rangers fans were of course excited, no matter how remote it may seem. Celtic fans however were quick to rubbish it. As one Celtic fan put it: "Van Persie? With their credit rating Rangers couldn't even get van hire."

LOTS of happy women singing old pop songs in Glasgow city centre this week as they leave the King's Theatre after the joyous Jackie the Musical, loosely based on the old teenage girl magazine Jackie. Show organisers have been digging out old letters from Glasgow girls published in Jackie, which included a Pauline Estro in Pollok who wrote: "My boyfriend phoned me and said he had a great surprise for me and he would tell me all about it that evening when he came round. I was all excited. Had he decided to buy our engagement ring? When he arrived he said, 'You've nagged me for months to go to the chiropodist so I've made an appointment'. I could have killed him."

SCHOOL holidays continued. A south side reader tells us he was at the cinema in Silverburn when a woman arrived with a gaggle of noisy children. She got the four of them seated in a row in front of our poor reader, and then she quietly walked away and sat in a different row.

OUR story about emergency flares reminds Gerry Burke: "While driving to my boat. I heard a sudden commotion and, in the mirror, watched a melee break out between two strange guys I assumed had hidden themselves under assorted waterproof jackets, trousers and boating gear. The flurry of multi-coloured flailing arms and legs prompted an emergency stop and I leapt from the car to confront them.

"It took some time to register that a faulty firing pin had activated the CO2 cylinder in my lifejacket at the bottom of the heap which had inflated to the size of a rubber dinghy creating a confusion of waterproof arms, legs, ropes and buoys nearly filling the rear of the car."