Craig Dooley, the Darn Good Telling Off You Ordered Has Now Arrived 

Note: Please make sure you have been to the bathroom and taken any prescribed medication before you read this missive. Each Darn Good Telling off contains a small but effective spell designed to maximize the effects of the castigation you are about to receive. Consult your family doctor before reading this letter if you are overly sensitive or in poor physical or mental health. 

To Craig Dooley: 

It is with the greatest displeasure that Dame Wotta Tripp has been summoned from her busy day in order to deliver a darn good telling off to a miscreant such as you, Craig. 

The fact that you have ordered it yourself, or someone has ordered it for you (and nobody could much blame them!), in no way detracts from the severity of your bad behaviour and the well-deserved cold, hard, implacable anger of Wotta Tripp which takes the ancient form of the 'Wrath of Wotta'. 

While viewing you she has found a super-abundance of self-serving, narcissistic and socially unacceptable behaviour patterns in your personal soul-signature. Having measured you and found you so severely lacking, Dame Wotta Tripp is alarmed for all the poor souls around you who will be impacted by your subsequent darkling thoughts and retrograde actions.  

Have you no shame? Shame on you! 

Do not think that your thoughts are not real, for they swirl around you like tentacled monstrosities, undermining your good intentions and bringing chaos and disorder to your life and the lives of those close to your  sinister influence and negative traits. 

This is in part caused by your slightly recessive DNA, but that is not at all an excuse.  

It is obvious to Dame Wotta Tripp that you could by now have been well on the way to overcoming these tendencies with just a little more self-discipline and hard work combined with some good old-fashioned soul-searching. 

You are even misbehaving while you are asleep. Having viewed your dream-content to see where you are going each night, Wotta Tripp is surprised that you have not contracted a nasty astral disease.  

She will take up her grim trident and chase you through several dimensions in order to bring you to account if necessary. 

For she is determined that you will turn what you like to think of as your life around and have a better future with fewer casualties all round. 

You should stop being so selfish and living for yourself alone as soon as possible. 

Wotta Tripp has looked into your probable future timelines to determine possibilities you might wish to explore. 

The one where you end up if you insist on following the path you are on now is dire and gloomy and should be avoided.  

There is yet another timeline where you end up donating a kidney to your cousin Tom, who continues drinking anyway and dies within three years. This undermines your health and casts a shadow over the rest of your life. 

Still a third option is a fairly enjoyable life studded with many happy occasions. This is the one to aim for. 

Dame Wotta Tripp will tell you how to set your life in the right direction, even though you don't altogether deserve it. 

If you choose to accept my very good advice you should proceed to take the following steps as instructed, but remember that they will only work properly for you if you also make an effort to change the worst of your degenerative habits: 

You must wait until the last Friday of the month in which you receive this telling-off. On that day you should have the following items already prepared to use: 

·     A purple or violet candle and a lighter 

·     A small dish of sea salt 

·     Wear loose flowing clothes of white 

·     A sterile needle and some peroxide on a swab 

·      A small clean stoppered vial 

·     2cc of red ink 

·     Cobwebs collected at dawn in a clear glass dish 

·     Parchment or cream writing paper 

·     A fresh quill  

·     A small table, facing north 

At 11.00 in the evening, shower and don your white robes. Place on the table all the other items on the list. Light the candle. Pick up the salt and taking a pinch at a time create a circle of salt around yourself and the table on the floor. 

Next, swab the forefinger of your left hand with the peroxide. Now take up the needle and prick yourself deeply with it - it should hurt a bit, because you have behaved rather badly. Squeeze several drops, at least 9, into the vial. If necessary, prick yourself again, for you know you deserve it. 

Pour the red ink into the vial with the blood, and then add the cobwebs as well. Stopper it and shake very well to mix.  

The next step is to use the ink and quill to write a suitable contract with yourself, promising to love, honour and respect yourself and also those around you. Mean what you write and make positive changes, because your self-contract is binding. 

If you slide back into your old ways you will be visited by a djinn bearing a small package that you will not like one little bit. If he has to visit you more than three times you will regret it - alas, too late! 

Wotta Tripp recommends as well that you make a basic study of time management and get an animal companion. I am tempted to recommend a snake in view of your character to date, but will instead advise you to acquire a medium-sized dog, perhaps a Welsh BorderCollie. Oh, and throw away those magazines as well. You know which ones I mean. 

She has also noted that you have a hidden talent that you're not yet aware of which will emerge later on if you take her advice, and which you will greatly enjoy, which is mildly irritating to her, under the circumstances. 

Stop living life like an underhanded little ferret and make everyone proud of you at last! 

Dame Wotta Tripp