Market stall with French cheeses — Better make room in the freezer for all that French cheese. Photograph: Nikolay Dimitrov/Alamy

A Brexit survival guide: freeze your cheese and holiday in Albania

This article is more than 7 years old

A land without Polish plumbers, the end of the Calais booze trip and no more need to learn tricky foreign languages … Welcome to post-EU Britain

It is time to think the unthinkable. Brexit is more than a possibility, if the polls are right. We may soon have to get used to all sorts of intolerable lifestyle changes. But let’s not be defeatist. We’re British after all. Here is our guide to how to survive Brexit. Yes, it’s as speculative and loony as those government information films on how to survive nuclear war, but … well, there’s no good way to end that sentence.

Text Władisław

Is your toilet leaking? Don’t delay. Text Wladislaw right now, before he returns to Poznań. Remember what happened when you got dodgy Ken to fix that drip? That’s right, the strange stain on the ceiling keeps getting bigger.

Become Irish

Let me ask you this. Do you have a little Irish in you? Of course you do. If either of your parents was an Irish citizen who was born in Ireland, then you are automatically an Irish citizen, irrespective of your place of birth. And so you can still be a citizen of the EU while living in the heaven that is post-Brexit Godalming. If one of your grandparents is an Irish citizen who was born in Ireland, but neither of your parents were born in Ireland, you may become an Irish citizen. Result! Or, as they say in Irish: “Togha!” If none of the above applies, you could always look pitiful, affect an interest in the Republic’s fortunes in Euro 16 and recite long chunks of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy at your citizenship hearing. Probably wouldn’t work.

A bag with bottles of wine — Go easy on the booze. Photograph: Alamy

Go on a mission to Calais

Don’t panic. There’s still time for a booze run. There are no limits to the alcohol and tobacco you can bring in from EU countries so long as you plan to consume them yourselves or present them as gifts – which, however you look at it, is a lot of gewürztraminer. By contrast, if you’re not in the EU, you can bring home a mere 16 litres of beer and four litres of non-sparkling wine, which probably wouldn’t be enough to get the average England fan through Euro 2016’s group stages. So hire a white van for a day and buy enough cheap continental hooch to create a retro 70s feature of a wine lake in your back garden.

Don’t break your arm skiing in the French Alps

Yes, in pre-Brexit days, the European Health Insurance Card allowed one to receive free or reduced-cost healthcare in other EU countries. No more. If you must break your arm skiing, do it in Aviemore. Yes, there may well be no snow to ski on in the Highlands, but that’s not really the point.

Freeze continental delicacies for the long dismal years ahead

There’s a very good thread on moneysavingexpert.com entitled “What Can I Do With This Huge Camembert?”. One answer is to freeze it. This, of course, gives a pointer to how we must proceed. Ladies and gentlemen, we must buy huge fridge-freezers to store our French cheeses, German sausages, Portuguese custard tarts, tapas dishes etc. Yes, there are – apparently – British camemberts and bries and so forth, but – really?

Sausage on a fork — The good old British banger: now with added fat! Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian

Enjoy the good old British banger

For too long, eurocrats have been messing with our sausages, haven’t they? Yes, they have. The Sun once complained that those damned continentals interfered with our freeborn British practice of allowing a certain amount of fat to count as meat in sausages. No more. Let rampant colon cancer and type 2 diabetes be the expressions of Britain’s newly independent spirit.

Be nice to your continental colleagues

Your French/German/Polish workmates will be feeling rejected thanks to Brexit and will soon return home. So treat them to a glass of dishwater-temperature bitter and some authentic British cuisine – toad in the hole and spotted dick, for instance. That’ll make them feel happier about leaving.

Forget farming, start fishing

You’re a farmer whose business model has been predicated on receiving billions in EU agricultural subsidies while you lean on gates chewing grass and looking into the middle distance. It’s time to retrain. Go to your library and borrow a singalong sea shanty CD. That’ll be your first step in your new career. If the UK takes control of its waters and starts stopping factory ships from the continent depleting fish stocks, you see, fishing could well become a lucrative profession.

Hand holding a cod — Cod almighty: British fish for British people Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

Ditch the Français

Are there two sweeter words in the English language than “Unlearn French”? Of course there aren’t. You’ll never need to speak French, German, Italian or Spanish again. Plus, you need never watch all those Euro dramas on Walter Presents or BBC4 that you secretly never enjoyed but pretended to like to impress your peers. Instead, you can sit watching On The Buses reruns as nature intended.

Learn the joy of waiting

Remember those happy days when you strolled through EU airports past a long queue of loser non-EU citizens waiting for immigration officials to give them cavity searches and/or unpleasant frownings? Thanks to Brexit, you’ll be in that queue soon. What to do? Catch up on your reading while you wait. What seem to be ludicrously big novels – Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch, Elena Ferrante’s quartet, that sextet of autobiographical novels by that Norwegian – will be perfect company while you wait for hours to be patronised by snooty French immigration officials.

Fall in love with the good old British seaside

Remember when you used to go to that lovely sun-drenched island in some blissful EU country? Those days are over. Get used to the sand in your eyes, the chip fat in your hair, getting dive bombed by gulls, hypothermia if you put a toe in the sea, and four hours of stationary traffic on the M6 on the way home.

Beach chair and parasol — At least the Germans won’t beat you to the beach. Photograph: Judith Collins/Alamy

Alternatively, visit a European country outside the EU

Iceland, Moldova, Kosovo or Andorra. They say Ukraine is very nice this time of year. Who does, you ask? Ukrainians, mostly. I’m looking forward to holidaying in the Albanian communist-era bunker that’s been converted into a hostel. It’s either that or Prestatyn.

Spend!

Remember all those now-useless euros you’ve got in that sock in the drawer? Convert them into sterling at the Post Office and buy Doom on PS4. Alternatively …

Save!

Britain’s small businesses are already stockpiling cash to buffer them from what economists are calling post-Brexit volatility. So don’t got nuts.

Visit grandad

In the 1970s, did your grandad do one last armed blag before scarpering to Benidorm to avoid detention at Her Majesty’s pleasure? Of course he did. Now’s the time to visit him on the Costa del Crime, before he gets plastic surgery, a new wig, and relocates under a pseudonym to a semi in Leicester.

Get in touch with your inner Norwegian

Of course, once you’ve forgotten those useless EU languages, you’ll have plenty of head space to learn Norwegian and thus emulate the citizens of that marvellous Scandinavian country. It’s the Norwegians who show Brexiteers the way to be happy, well-adjusted and outside the loony constraints of the European super state. Repeat after me: “Jeg føler meg veldig selvsentrert, naermest hovmodig” (“I am feeling very self-centred, rather smug”).