You wait for one Better Days and two arrive at once

I was tottering along the street a while ago when a black cat appeared from under a hedge to say hello. I always stop to fuss cats. They're cute and fun, and you never know if one will suddenly start talking French or lead you to an abandoned whelk mine.

The moment I stroked this friendly black cat, another black cat appeared. Same hedge, same appearance. I suddenly had two black cats greeting me. It was like being in The Matrix except without the pill popping and questionable spoons. 

Apart from the brief concern that I had developed a special power that duplicates whatever I stroke, a talent that could get very problematic very quickly, I handled the situation fine. Two very similar cats. Two very similar hands. The maths worked out: double petting commenced. 

Why am I telling you this? Because at the moment there are two songs in the UK singles chart called Better Days. This concerns me, because singles are less cute than cats and I don't like having two of them. 

One of the Better Days is by Neiked, Mae Muller and Polo G. It's a sunny slice of Tik Tok-famous retro pop in which US rapper Polo G asks "can I get an amen" so politely, it sounds like he's ordering afternoon tea. 

The other Better Days is a yearning torch song by Irish singer Dermot Kennedy. In the video, he falls into a puddle and stays there for a bit. It's pretty wet physically and musically, but Snow Patrol fans will like it. 

Two Better Days in one chart? I thought this wasn't allowed. I thought you had to give songs different nicknames so you could tell them apart, in the same way we all have friends called Big Tony, French Tony, Naked Tony and Seven Years In Strangeways Tony. I thought songwriters had these things allocated to them, making them queue with a numbered ticket as if they were waiting for fancy cheese.

In the past, duplicated track titles were easily navigated. Adele and Lionel Richie both had a Hello, but the songs were decades apart and Adele didn't have a bonce made out of clay. Orbital and Boney M both had tracks called Belfast. Neither are likely to get confused, unless the Orbital brothers suddenly start coming up with disco dance moves. Mariah Carey and Big Bird both had different songs called All I Want for Christmas Is You, but only one of them was about a snuffleupagus. 

It gets more difficult the closer the songs get. In the mid-1980s, there were two number one ballads called The Power of Love courtesy of Jennifer Rush and Frankie Goes To Hollywood. Close in time, close in style. Meanwhile, Robert Plant, World Party and Erasure all had different hits called Ship Of Fools within 20 months of each other. It's such a colourful metaphor that, in my mind, all three songs have muddled into one vague image of a bunch of clowns on a pirate ship doing karaoke.

Whitesnake and Alison Moyet both had mid-1980s songs titled Is This Love. Go and look at the videos for the songs. Moyet and David Coverdale sport the exact same shaggy dog hairstyle. It's ridiculous. There have been 20 hit singles called Stay. It's such a bland track name, I could sing you the Shakespears Sister one but absolutely none of the others, despite the rest of the list featuring big hitters like Rihanna, Mica Paris and Simply flipping Red. Not helpful.

I demand that each Better Days song changes its name. The first one, the Tik Tok one, should be called Afternoon Tea. And the other one, the wet one, should be called Oh Look I'm In A Puddle, While I Think About It Whatever Happened To Snow Patrol. That should sort it. Who do I contact about this? Is it the Queen? Paul Gambaccini? Greg James?!

The other solution is to enact a new law in which every song is called Song. Every song ever written. All of them called Song. 

Hey, I've written a new track.

Brilliant, what's it called?

Song. 

That's great, what's it about?

Stuff.

Sounds wonderful, here's a Grammy.

I wonder if the existence of two Better Days is a Matrix glitch caused by the appearance of two similar cats. I'd ask Keanu Reeves if this is possible, but he's done four films with the word 'Matrix' in, so I'm not going to take his advice on anything. There is no spoon? I've got loads of spoons, mate, all of them identical.

Further Fats: No-one wants songs about the moon these days (2017)

Further Fats: A little cat story (it's the story that's little, not the cat) (2018)

Get ready for Fat Roland's top 20 magical dreams

Instead of raving all night, sometimes I like to go to bed. And when I go to bed, I like to fall asleep and dream.

Shakespeare said "to sleep, perchance to dream", and I think he was waffling about death, but whatever the ruffed berk was on about, he clearly found dreams fascinating. And so do I. Especially when the dream stays in my memory in the first moments of the day; a lingering afterglow of imagined nonsense.

If I find a dream particularly memorable, I tend to post about it on Twitter. So I did some homework. I trawled through my entire Twitter history to find all of my tweets about my dreams. 

So, a special treat for psychologists everywhere, and perhaps as a tribute to 808 State's excellent 1989 track Magical Dream, here is...

Fat Roland's top 20 magical dreams

A list of my dreams as posted on Twitter over the past 11 years, in no particular order. This is all genuine. Brace yourself. 

1. The record collection

Last night, I dreamt I was showing someone my record collection - but the only record I had was I'd Rather Jack by The Reynolds Girls (pictured above).

2. Fridge problems

Last night I dreamt Robert Plant sneaked into my fridge and did a poo in my Yopp.

3. On the bus

Dreamt I met Debbie McGee on the 142 bus. She was very nice despite being overburdened with shopping.

4. The classic album

Last night, I dreamt I had a listening party with all of my friends so we could reappraise the "game-changing Manic Street Preachers album with all the Red Hot Chili Peppers songs on".

5. The brush off

Last night, I dreamt that every time I used a broom, I chucked it away. I had a bin full of brooms.

6. Career choice

Last night, I dreamed I became a hairdresser by mistake.

7. At the club 

Last night I dreamt I was at a club night. Every so often, Grace Jones would patrol the room to check no-one was smoking. 

8. At the memorial

Last night's dream: I got asked by my local pub to say a few words at a George Formby memorial event. I said yeah fine, I know all about him, I'll not prepare, I'll just wing it. As I walk into the stage, I realise I know nothing about Formby: I was thinking of Bobby Ball.

9. Waking nightmare

Last night I had a nightmare in which I dreamt Mumford & Sons was a real thing and then I woke up and it was true.

10. The race

Dreamt I was racing spiders. (I won.)

11. Definitely my ego

Last night I dreamed I was giving motivational leadership speeches in a car wreckage yard whose electronics were powered by a Nook E-reader.

12. At the pub

Last night I dreamt I went to the pub for a meal. Covid made it way too stressful. Don't touch that, don't queue there, don't lick that, don't stick that in there. Also, @jpmdaly was having a pint with Lou Reed, which just made everything worse.

13. Phone levels

Last night I dreamed my phone battery was at 25% but when I woke up it was at 46% not 25%. 

14. In Edinburgh

Just awoken from a dream in which every Edinburgh pedestrian was dressed as an egg. Big oval costumes with leg holes, but no arm holes or eye holes. Chaos.

15. Someone else's record collection

Had a dream that I was DJing, but I forgot all my records. I had to use @fullofpenguins' vinyl instead but all he had was 30 copies of Female Of The Species by Space.

16. Possibly satire

All I dreamt about last night were zombie bankers molesting me with their elephant trunks.

17. On Christmas Eve

Was intending to be a good boy and go to midnight communion, but fell asleep and dreamt of breakcore instead.

18. A bit dark

Last night I dreamt horses were on fire. I asked an elderly couple if I could borrow their duvet cover to smother the flames. They refused.

19. The grime MC

Last night, I dreamt that Jme released a new single, but it was underneath a pavement and as a result a bunch of Dutch people lost an election inside an ice cream van.

20. All too real

Dreamt last night that my blog got deleted and that the entire world banking system collapsed causing poverty everywhere. My blog. My blog!

Further Fats: Every Guardian music 'crepuscular' reference since the start of 2010, probably (2013)

Further Fats: Ten slices of shallow-fried Twitter whimsy (2020)

Live blog: Elbow nudge ahead for Mercury Music Prize win - my cat is disappointed

I'm blogging "as live" while I sit with my poorly cat to watch the 2008 Mercury Music Prize on the tellybox. The following text was written as it happened and has not been edited.

9.55pm: I make a glass of orange juice and stare at the TV screen. If Burial (pictured) doesn't win, I'm going to smash in my telly. I scan the room for a suitable heavy object. I look at my sleeping cat. She's quite big. Not fat, but tall. I consider what it would be like smashing in a TV screen with a cat. I drink my juice.

9.58pm: The programme starts shortly. Massive junglist Goldie has just lost some orchestra conducting contest to either Mel or Sue out of Mel And Sue. Clive Anderson is presenting this programme. I wonder if he will stay on my telly and present the Mercury Music Prize.

10.01pm: Ooh, it's starting. The titles are all blue and neon like it's Casualty or something. Lauren Laverne, ex-90s indie star, is presenting. She interviewed Squarepusher once and she looked like she didn't know who he is. I hope she rates Burial. She's just called the nominees a "mish mash".

10.04pm: The Last Shadow Puppets are performing; they're how I would like the Coral to sound. Some indie band has just played, and now there's a woman hammering her fist on a piano. Oh look, now it's British Sea Power, who are glorious.

10.08pm: During a bit of punditry which makes it sound like a football programme ("Simon Armitage: "He can do no wrong for me."), I wonder what 'mish-mash' music would sound like and how I would dance to it.

10.10pm: After some r'n'b nonsense, Burial's Ghost Hardware lights up my TV like a solar flare, but a really dark solar flare. Oh please God let him win. Gosh, is that Robert Plant? Hasn't he got wavy hair?

10.12pm: Lauren Laverne: "It's not just a young man's game any more, is it?" It's not flapping FOOTBALL, for gizmo's sake. Props to Armitage who desperately wants the mysterious Burial to turn out to be a "retired military historian from Kent."

10.14pm. This is moving on apace. Oh tindersticks, it's Adele. GETHEROFFTHESCREEN! Aaaargh, my ears hurt, Make her stop! Oh, she has. And now it's Radiohead, who are God and I will punch anyone who critizised them. With my cat.

10.18pm: Armitage has just called Radiohead "our generation's Pink Floyd". Come on, Imran Ahmed, say something interesting. Yes, he's just tipped Burial for the win. He's a wise man.

10.20pm: That jazzy guy with a lady's name with slicked hair (Jules something) is bigging up the audience with a bit of sub-Stephen Fry wordsmithery. I suddenly want Elbow to win. Or Portico Quartet, just to wobble the applecart. Maybe I'm just mentioning these bands so I don't look so foolish when Burial doesn't win.

10.22pm: And the £20,000 goes to... come on, get on with it Jules... I'm sticking with Burial for the win. It's... Bury's own Elbow. Brilliant. I always knew they'd do it. Didn't I tip them? Didn't I? No?

10.28pm: My poorly cat sleeps on, her paw snuggled over her eyes, while Elbow do a refreshingly good-natured interview with Laverne. She's got some kind of virus that keeps attacking her every few months, poor thing. My cat, I mean, not Lauren Laverne. I decide not to use her to smash in my tellybox. I switch the TV off instead and and let my cat console me for tipping the wrong winner.