Spending two weeks travelling long distances to farmer meetings has given me the opportunity to study another aspect of wildlife in the modern world: life on the motorway.

Danger is at hand on all sides. It can confront you from the front and from the rear.

The senses become attuned to where the real dangers lie, and I have now categorised them.

The first automatic alert comes with the sight of a lorry with a white rear number plate. These are invariably foreign lorries. Foreign lorries will come into your lane while you are in the process of overtaking them with only the minimum of warning.

I suspect a finger trailing down from the steering wheel moves the indicator lever as the hand moves the steering wheel, so two occar almost simultaneously.

Foreign lorries also have a very cavalier attitude to which lane they are actually in and can veer around with no warning at all. This, I suspect, is when the driver's eyes are searching in vain for the last chip in the polystyrene tray.

But Audi A4s are more dangerous than foreign lorries. It's always an A4 that will overtake you on the inside if it can't get by on the outside. It's always an A4 that will pull out across all the lanes as it enters the motorway, straight into the outside lane.

When you're overtaking a long line of traffic in the fast lane at, say, 75 miles an hour, which I know is beyond the speed limit, it's always an A4 that will take up position five yards from your boot, flashing its lights to try to intimidate you into moving over.

This behaviour always irritates me because I'm already going too fast, so I don't really know what to do. I've decided the best thing to do is to slow down to 65, which irritates them (only a good thing) much more than I'm actually irritated myself. When they do eventually get by, they usually give you a hand signal which suggests activities of which I know very little.

A4 drivers are the young bulls of the human herd. They are the thrusters, the ambitious, living their lives in the fast lane as they seek out that ultimate goal in life – a movement up the career ladder that will bring with it an A6.

I, however, have always modelled my life on that of the old bull. You may remember the story of the young bull and the old bull lying contentedly together on a hillside while down in the valley below them is a herd of cows grazing leisurely. The young bull says: "Lets run down to those cows and make love to one of them." The old bull says: "Let's walk down and make love to them all."

■ To continue the driving theme, our pressure washer on the farm has been broken for some time now so I haven't washed my car for weeks, possibly months.

Our yard is always filthy in the winter – I drive on lots of farmyards which are much the same. The car was in a hell of a state and I had it in mind to get it washed, if only to get rid of the salt.

So I happened upon a specialist car wash and drove in. It was attended and the operator indicated a board listing six options, each adding a bit more to the previous one.

Option seven wasn't called "option seven", it was called "full house". I told him I'd have the full house and he ran his eyes over my car and said: "I should bloody think so."

■ The keeper's on the mobile phone wanting to know when I'll be up to feed the cattle.

It's the time of year when we do "our deal". I allow them two acres of game cover in one field and an acre of maize on another. Both areas are strategically sited to provide a good pheasant drive.

He tells me there is a recession on and money is tight. This is news to me, not having seen a television programme or read a newspaper for six months.

So I touch him for £50 more than last year and he seems relieved. I should have asked for more but we've all got to get by as best we can.

The wet autumn meant we didn't get as many crops planted as we would have liked, so he goes on to inquire what crop will go in to which field.

I go through a list that includes fodder beet and kale, appropriating those crops to fields that I know would provide good pheasant cover and drives.

By the time I have finished he is almost salivating. I have little intention of going through with it but it's only a wind-up – there must be a cruel streak in me somewhere.

I had to take my number two grandson into town on Saturday and Sunday morning to play football.

I think he's 12 now and has been in the same team since he was a little boy. They have had the same manager and coach over the years, staying with the boys as they move up into each new age group.

It's all very well organised and keeps them fit and active until I tell them to play rugby. But I was just a bit sad. I took Tom in and left him with the team manager and returned home. Both myself and his Dad have work on Saturday and Sunday mornings that takes until about noon.

All the other boys will have their Dads there to watch except Tom. He doesn't seem fazed by it, though. He's got used to it.

He scored a goal in each game and I had a detailed account of both. But I'm sure it registers that his dad is a farmer and has less (much less) time off than his friends' parents.

Perhaps that's why he never goes up to the yard to see the farming.

We don't have to be dairy farmers, but the story I have related is part of the cost of being one. We've lost most of a generation of young people who might have come on to our farms. And now, I realise, we might be about to lose another.