Down by the riverside

Today the Ness looked like a reflecting sheet of polished steel,* all blues, yellows and browns. It was moving slowly and gracefully towards its final destination like an airport travelator.  
    I hugged the riverbank and took a lady mallard by surprise. Perhaps she was nesting. She returned to the same spot after I had passed. There is a supermarket a quarter of a mile away, but you wouldn’t know it. The nearby road is also unseen and unheard.  Just me and a duck called Daisy by the sunkissed river. The extra is of one of the few fields which have not been given up to housing.
 
*Spike Milligan’s description on the English Channel in one of his wartime memoirs.