The first months of the year are a tough time to inhabit this corner of the planet. First there’s January to contend with – darker than Himmler’s sock drawer and full to the rafters with post-festive self-flagellation. Then we’re into February, which is just more of the same: January by another name. No wonder the powers-that-be decided to shave a few days off it.
Fortunately, salvation has arrived – as it does every year, just when we were nearing breaking point amid the relentlessness of winter. I write, of course, of the Six Nations, a great sporting festival devoted to genial national rivalry and daytime binge-drinking in equal double measures.

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