Unexpurgated Joy...

I've just returned home from visiting Joy, my late mother's remaining friend. She is 87 and has the mental acuity of someone half her age. And a fearsome ability to express her mind. Occasionally with colourful language that lights up the room.
She is one of the few remaining living connections to my late parents and while the time is spent in wall-wall conversation, it is interspersed with jobs that she is no longer able to do. So I clean brass that her arthritic fingers can longer burnish, I dive under a bed to reach a stored away replacement washing-bowl, and I dust the top shelves that she can no longer reach.
She makes the meals and pours the wine with an extraordinarily steady hand, and regales me with tales of grandmotherhood, accompanied by hoots of laughter.

A couple of years ago she was irritated by the youths on other side of her garden wall who were drinking, and using foul language. They had even chucked the contents of the litter bin over the wall. "And I could smell the cannabis, darling," she told me with such authority that I didn't bother to ask her how she knew. So she went to place a complaint at the local Police Station. She told them in great detail all that had been going on, and about her confrontation with them.
"I told them, darling, that I had asked them very nicely if they would desist from emptying the rubbish over the wall. They looked at me and the ring leader told me to fuck off. The Police asked what I did next. I told them, I did as I was told. I fucked off."

Currently, she is  being inconvenienced, but not troubled by, nuisance phone calls. She is always very polite and tells them that she is not interested. She says she will ask one of her sons to sort this for her. In the meantime, I have come up with up with an alternative approach. This is the card I will be sending her, to say thank you for having me...