People-watching is a bit of a hobby of mine, and I've found the perfect spot to indulge. I've arranged to meet someone at one of those hotels on a motorway junction.

I'm an hour early – I'm always early – so I order a cup of coffee and back myself into a corner seat. If you've had a scary life like mine, you always back into a corner. You don't want people behind you because you don't know what they're up to.

A waitress, a young girl in her late fifties (if you went to school when I did, "young girl" stretches into that age group), brings my coffee and I settle down to wait.

This is the sort of hotel where people have "meetings" and I don't have long to wait before there's people to watch.

Six business types come in. I can work out that three work for one company and three for another. There's only one who knows everybody and he does the introductions. He has a nervous laugh, which is starting to annoy me already.

I've noticed business people dress in two different ways these days. Some dress up in suits, though if you are really cool you have a smart suit and shirt on but no tie. It goes without saying that I am dressed like this.

Some dress down, which is supposedly "smart-casual". I've never really understood what "smart-casual" means. I spoke at a dinner for bank managers once and it said "smart-casual" on the tickets. I thought it would be a good chance to find out what smart-casual really meant, but I still don't know. These six people are all "dressing down". But there is always an element of how far "down" I dare to go.

I would put these six into the scruffy bracket. In fact, they're not dressed much differently to how I will be when I take some calves to market in a few hours' time, except that their clothes aren't splattered with cow muck.

All the nervous introductions over, they move to sit down. The nerves spill over into jokes and laughter and if I close my eyes for a moment, I can easily imagine there's a donkey in the foyer.

They all unpack their laptops, a compulsory accessory, and someone asks: "Shall we have coffee?" This is greeted with delight, as though no one had given it a thought, and the hotel was going to let them sit there without spending any money. I can't wait for them to get started, but when they do I curse because I can hear a bit of what they are saying but not all.

Within 10 minutes, it all gets quite serious. One side wants the other side to have 50,000. Fifty thousand what, I've no idea.

The other side think this number is ambitious. But I can tell from the tone of the conversation that 50,000 is written into a budget so it's all getting a bit difficult.

I yawn and stretch and rearrange myself so my good ear is 1ft nearer, but I must have overdone it because they start glancing across at me and lower their tones.

Luckily, someone else soon comes along who I can study. He's in the "dress-up" category, really smart, probably about my age, with a good head of silvery white hair – not like my "manky and greying" 'do.

He's wearing a smart suit and a blue shirt with a white collar – I've never had one of those. He tells the waitress he's expecting some important clients for lunch and wants to choose a table. She becomes quite animated as she chats to him and her face lights up. All I had was a thank you when I paid for my coffee.

I've always been nervous around women because you don't know what they are thinking, do you?

He chooses a table which, as far as I can see, is identical to about 50 others. But the waitress is so happy with his choice you'd have thought she'd just won an Oscar.

I decide he's probably chatting her up. Lunch is £5.95 for two courses, so his clients can't be that important. He asks the waitress for a cup of coffee while he waits and she just melts before us.

I've got him down as a poser in my order of things. Then he comes across to the table next to me and says "good morning" as he sits down.

I hope he's not going to chat me up as well.

Then, like a divine confirmation that I've been right all along and that my classifications of people I don't know are spot on, he crosses one elegantly suited leg over the other and I can see he's got three-inch heels on his shoes. What does he wear them for, to get a better view?

The waitress is as tall as he is when he's got his shoes on, so I bet she'd be disappointed if they ever got to the stage of him taking them off.

As the year goes on there are milestones that mark the passing of the days. Now I can switch all the yard lights off before we finish milking in the mornings.

Every year, the Canada geese arrive at dawn. You don't always see them arrive, but you always hear them. They come to nest on the little island in the pond in front of our house.

Sometimes, half a dozen come at the same time and they fight for two or three days for the nesting site.

In goose terms, the island is a "one up, one down", so there's room for only one nest. This year, a single pair have arrived and I did see them fly in. They swept in with loud calls as though proclaiming ownership of the island, the field and the territory.

Like the season itself, they are late this year. They usually come in mid-February, which puts them nearly a month late, but the spring around here is about the same.

Our daffodils still aren't out and it intrigues me that plant and animal life – or in this case bird life – is attuned to the same sort of timing that adjusts itself to the vagaries of the weather.

The pair have been here only a couple of days and already the female is sitting on what she presumably calls a nest, laying her eggs. It's all very interesting.

In due course there will be the young gulls to watch, too, and then they'll fly back to the lake a mile away, from where they came.

But what we really want are some swans.