You know you're a (very bad) missionary when...

- You hide Marmite from guests.

- You find 100g of cheddar in a supermarket and it costs three pounds fifty, and you buy it.

- The cheese on toast that results from this is the highlight of your week. 

- Your water comes from a well in the back garden, and turns your kettle orange but that's ok because 'it's only sulphur'.

- Annabel Karmel cannot help you here.

- You have fed your baby jarred rabbit. Once by accident, and a few times on purpose after that.

- You go into clothes shops but leave without buying anything because
a) you're too fat for the clothes
b) you understand nothing
c) the woman guarding the fitting rooms spoke to you but you couldn't work out what she was saying so you ran away

- Your tumble dryer is from the 80's. And it's German. So you spend hours on Google translate and then just have to risk it and set the bed linen to 'lack moisture' or 'completed fail'.

- Your child has never experienced Cbeebies. Instead she is very excited about pirated, low resolution Pingu. In Russian.

- You have only got the money (and will) to decorate one room in your house, and you don't go in it but sometimes hover in the doorway just looking at how beautiful it is. You post pictures of it on the internet.

- And yet you're so busy that this room is somehow strewn with clothes you don't remember wearing.

- Your baby has probably said her first word. You have no idea. She doesn't speak English. 

- If you open the laptop in front of your baby she will get a bit desperate to look inside it, because that's where her Grandparents live.

- Your baby's latest soft toy was stolen out of a bag of beanie babies donated to an orphanage.

- You're terrified. All the time. Of everything. If you could you'd just stay indoors forever.

- You make your own frozen ready meals.

- You forgot to pack toys to help her develop so she's still just licking teddies. And the mop. 

- You try to buy her toys to teach her to count and shiz, but a flashy singy ball costs thirty pounds and you leave the shop in bewildered shame.

- When people ask you what you want for Christmas you don't know what to say because 'everything' isn't acceptable. 

- Your main expenditure is air fares.

- You own the Lada that Jeremy Clarkson reviewed as 'the worst car i've ever driven'. 

- Said Lada fills you with contentment and happiness, and all your missionary friends would also like to own a Lada.

- You drive around for ages getting lost trying to find a baby stuff shop, you finally find the big signs to the baby stuff shop so you park up. You wake the baby. You assemble the buggy. You insert the baby. You follow the signs. You round a corner. It's not a baby stuff shop, it's a car wash. 

- You can buy really nice wine for two pounds!