There aren’t many people who can claim to have seen a snowman fly over their house. It may sound fantastical, but every Christmas I settle down to watch The Snowman, Raymond Briggs’s best-loved work, and watch as the red-haired boy and the plump, tangerine-nosed snowman swoop over the downs that surround the village where I live before gliding above the Royal Pavilion and Brighton Pier and on out to sea.
