Comfort Blanket

I dare you not to smile

Cartoons can be the best therapy. OK, there are many, many truly awful, or at best truly mediocre cartoons out there, playing and replaying endlessly on all those seemingly infinite tv channels. But scuff around in the sand for a while and there are some beautiful gems to be found, whose imagination and artistic brilliance shine through. I want to recommend three of my favourite cartoons that really deserve to be explored. I want to write you a prescription for 10 minutes of joy and happiness. Rediscover your inner 7 year old, reconnect with the unself-conscious you and ignore what anyone else says. Good cartoons are a brilliant tonic, a proper 10 minute pick-me-up, the ideal bit of escapism.

Charlie and Lola - (www.charlieandlola.com)

Charlie and Lola started out as the most imaginative and lovely books, and then due to their popularity turned into the equally lovely cartoon. Reasons to love Charlie and Lola:

1. The drawings and the art work are exquisite. In the books the author, the awesomely talented Lauren Child, has used fabric and paper to make collage pictures and then added so much imagination that you could cry.
2. The music is just beautiful and evokes the joy of the cartoons perfectly.
3. The characters: Charlie is the best big brother ever, so good he could never exist in real life! Lola is the cute 5 year old who knows her own mind and often gets her words about face. And Lola has an imaginary friend called Soren Lorensen (well, didn't you? maybe he or she wasn't called Soren Lorensen but you and I know they were there...).

Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends

Talking of imaginary friends, and not that I want you to think I'm a bit obsessed or in need of real folk to talk to ... You can have a peek at Foster's Home here: www.cartoonnetwork.lt/tv_shows/fosters/index.html

Foster's Home is where imaginary friends go when the children who brought them into existence don't need them anymore. I love this cartoon because it is so different and a million miles from your average run of the mill cartoon churned out by the bucket full. The graphics are great, the characters are as kooky as your great aunt Clara and the storylines have been well knitted into a surreal but warm jumper. The two main characters are a boy called Mac, who is 8 and his imaginary friend Bloo (who is, I think, a blue ghost). Mac's mum thinks Mac is too old for an imaginary friend but luckily they can both spend time together at Foster's. My favorite character is Wilt, a tall gangly ... er ... red thing who plays basketball and has a missing arm.

Watch it and you will be taken to a far more imaginative world, which is surreal, fascinating and uplifting at the same time.

Rex the Runt

Rex the Runt (www.aardman.com/rextherunt/window.html) comes from the same stable as Wallace and Gromit, and yes he and his friends are made of plasticine. (Now wouldn't life be so much better if adults were encouraged to play with plasticine on at least one official plasticine day a year? Mmm that smell - wouldn't leave you for hours). Well there's the ever optimistic and resourceful Rex, always a bit of a chancer with another scheme under his collar for fame and fortune. As for the ever necessary sidekicks, there's Rex's girlfriend Wendy and there's Vince, who's not really the full ticket and has a strange disease that makes him sing opera at inappropriate moments and say "Tuesday" rather randomly (in fact, apart from the singing, if I remember correctly Tuesday may be Vince's only word). Only a couple of short series were ever made, but perhaps the highlight is the song that Rex and his friends sang to try and win a competition: "Come into the kitchen of love and bake a happiness cake".

Take me to a HAPPY place!

This is a blog about healthy escapism (with the occasional sensible bit). This is about finding relief from the credit crunch and happiness despite the downturn. It is here to cheer you up, to cheer me up, to escape the gloom for five minutes and remember the good times, the best times. I'm not advocating you hide in your comfort blanket and never show your face again to natural daylight - that would solve little in the long run. But a short bit of respite will do us all some good.

So, we're all going to hell in a handcart. At least let me show you what I'd shove into my handcart as it careers helplessly down the hill of no return. Let me you show you how I'd decorate it. Then maybe you can take some time out to think about your own personal handcart.

Some of my "comfort blankets" are, in no particular order:

1. Watching "Barefoot Contessa" on UKTV Food. American comfort food by the lovely cuddly Ina Garten.
2. Looking back to a time when life was more simple. Look at those old Ladybird books showing Janet and John and their happy smiling mother. The perfect book was brought out a while back called "Boys and Girls", which has just the right mix of those glorious illustrations and irony.
3. The simplest thing like a hot water bottle on a cold winter night, listening to the rain and wind beat against the window while you are safe and warm inside.
4. Bright colours - try pink, orange and lilac together and how could you not feel better?
5. Curling up with a good book. "The Time Travellers Wife" has probably been read by everybody by now, but if you haven't yet you have to - it's the best book I've read in years.
6. Stroking the guinea pigs and listening to them wheeking appreciatively.
7. Watching a film and being taken to another place. Try the Pink Panther films by Peter Sellers for laugh out loud therapy, or some of the more gentle Japanese Manga cartoons such as "Howl's Moving Castle" or "Kiki's Delivery Service". The world is a better, kinder place there.