Britain voted to Leave the EU, my car was towed away at a cost of £300 and I broke the original glass over an 18th-century watercolour. It has been a bad couple of days. Having been an antique dealer for 30 years it is my immediate future and those in my business that is my most urgent concern. In the coming years and decades I can reflect at leisure on the effect of the current swing to the right in global politics; I may even reminisce with friends about these times and the turmoil we seem to be embarking on. But right now I am concentrating on next week. It is a week that begins with the opening of the Olympia Arts and Antiques Fair on Monday 27 June, on Wednesday is the preview of the Masterpiece fair, whilst Thursday sees the finish of Art Antiques London and the viewing of the major summer auction sales at Christie's and Sotheby's. The first week of these is dedicated to the contemporary and modern sales and the second to the decorative arts. Millions - possibly billions - of slightly cheaper pounds' - worth of art are either on show for direct sale or coming under the hammer. London and its position as one of major centres for the trading in art - if not the centre of the global art market - is under threat.

My nearly finished stand - If we build it will they come?

It may be that the current drop in the value of the pound will make our goods more appealing to foreign currency buyers. As I write everything on view is instantly 10% cheaper than it was. But it is the mood, the confidence, that we need to assess. I am exhibiting at Olympia and by the time you read this the first days will probably have passed and we will be getting a bit of a feeling for the way the market will respond. In the old days at Olympia the set-up days were busy with dealers trading with each other - there were 300 of us in those days; I used to vet the fair simply to get access to buy early, before becoming an exhibitor. One year in the 90s, my colleagues - and I - at Mallett spent over £1,000,000 and we weren't nervous - we were thrilled. Over the last few years things have become very different - Mallett has closed all its shops and is trading at fairs only and from the Dreweatt auction house premises near Newbury. There is very little inter-trade dealing and we are now a reduced but still merry band of around 100 exhibitors. Prices have dropped dramatically since 2008 - remember that year? Most dealers now at Olympia sell the majority of what they have below £10,000.

The goods may be fewer and cheaper but the imagination and fantasy is still very much in evidence. That was always the point of Olympia. You can find great things but mainly you go for fun, surprise and affordable quality - everything is authenticated through vetting. Elsewhere, too, there are great things on offer. - The major salerooms lay on their best decorative arts sales of the year. There the contemporary and modern sales, which are the bedrock of their profitability, are followed at Christie's by Classic week and at Sotheby's by Treasures. So this fortnight is incredibly important. It is a significant barometer but most vitally it is straightforward, bottom-line commerce. If we have a week of flops no one will be very surprised but it may not - it need not -work out that way.

I can recall a time - and this shows how old I am - when I used to buy in francs in France. The exchange rate used to flutter around 10 francs to the pound. At one time the franc strengthened to 8 and suddenly everything in France was fiercely expensive. Whilst it lasted it is true that hotels and meals were pricey but I bought very well indeed. It came down to the dealers - they were keen, they had fresh stock, and they were prepared to deal out of their woes. This is the way forward for us now, I believe. Sellers in the auction rooms and dealers on the exhibition floors have to MAKE business happen. We cannot sit around and wait for the market to pick up. We are entering a sink or swim period and those that swim should thrive.

If I sell nothing over the next week or so I will have every excuse. At the same time, it may simply be that no one wants the things I have. However, if enthusiasm and a willingness to compromise and accommodate the times is required I will be there and ready. The EU vote result is for the majority in London not what we wanted; we live through international trade, and the more border-less it is the better. Last week I sped over to Belgium and came back the same day with a car full of art. I may not be able to do that shortly. I am just one of millions of British citizens and other Europeans who have benefitted from freedom of movement. All this does not matter as we are irrevocably in this situation and we have to make the best of it. Head up, chin high and off we go.

With less than a week to go before the EU referendum I wanted to use 'life in the arts lane' to reflect on whether to stay or to go.

Before I step off the precipice and express my opinion I want to reminisce. In 1971, at the age of 9, I was horrified to find that my large handsome brown pennies had been replaced by measly tiny decimal pennies. Decimalisation had arrived and the sweets in my local shop seemingly doubled in price overnight. My 'd' turned into a 'p', and I felt sad. A half crown in pocket money seemed a substantial and useful sum, and a crown seemed untold wealth and very occasionally I would be given a fortune in the form of a 10-shilling note. I never, ever, got a whole pound. But then 10 shillings turned into 50p and a crown into 25p and my proudly held half crown was a mere 12 1/2p. It was the dawn of the move towards Europeanisation. I was 9 and it seemed a real cheat to me. My horizons were narrow then - what I wanted was sweets at 4 for a penny and to buy my favourite comics. The heavy coins in my small sticky hand were treasures, and the replacements seemed insubstantial and bogus.

A tale of two pennies, and two portraits of our Queen - 1965 and 2015

I am now 54 and we have been in Europe since 1973. My so-called grown-up work life began in 1985 when I joined Mallett but my broadened understanding of Europe had began earlier when I first noted that my parents kept a shelf of jam jars full of small denomination coins from countries all over Europe. In 1990 I started travelling to buy for Mallett and it was a full-time job orchestrating travel, invoicing and shipments for goods coming from one or more European countries at once. I once bought in Belgium a pair of Chinese porcelain figures and too late realised that I had worked out the exchange rate wrong. The exchange rate from Belgian Francs to pounds was 60:1. The Chinese figures cost 10 times more than I thought. Luckily they were very nice and Mallett managed to sell them. Gradually Europe has changed. The progress that has been made has been slow and painful and yet now I can travel and both buy and sell anywhere in Europe as if I was here in England. I know that the system is imperfect. There are places where they still want to be paid in cash or fiddle the figures on the invoice. There are places where people say one thing and do another. There are also countries within the EU where the rules for the movement of goods differ. But everywhere, even though it has been at a snail's pace, things have become easier. Of course, for me, my Euros still feel a bit unreal, but now I pay with a card or via an app on my telephone - cash itself is becoming a rarity.

Good old traditional Danish bacon, the staple of a hearty English breakfast.

I can remember the 1980s when the UK economy was in real trouble and many went abroad to find work. The television series "Auf Wiedersehen, Pet" chronicled that time. When people complain today about economic migrants coming to the UK from Europe they are forgetting a time when travel in the other direction was to our benefit. To the art trade European business integration brings huge benefits and consequently Leave would set us all back. Times are very tough already in our business, confidence is increasingly hard to find - consequently if I should find myself inhibited once more by issues of currency, travel and the movement of goods it could result in me and others all having to find proper jobs.

Mashed potatoes at Brasserie Lipp in Paris. The potato brought from America in the 16th century and made into a national dish of most of Europe.

In the end, for me, the EU debate is not about money and the ability to do business. I know that there are a raft of strong arguments to be made for why Europe is better for us 'In' rather than 'Out'; a plethora of experts from the world over have expressed their firm opinions that Britain should remain. No one seems to pay any heed to expertise, they even suspect. In any case, in the end I believe it has to be an emotional decision. No one can see into the future, one has to just jump - the archetypal leap of faith. As I drive around the countryside and I see vast signs in fields encouraging us to LEAVE, I find it incredibly depressing. What sort of host would I be to put up a sign saying 'Leave' to welcome all my guests? Britain is an island, separate from Europe anyway, but the principle of 'Leave' is so aggressive and so adamant that it makes the antisocial, xenophobic feelings behind the sign hard to mask. We have a wonderful tunnel now under the channel and it is as easy to get to Paris or Brussels as it is to get to Leeds or Manchester. We are part of Europe now and so we should take the long view and appreciate all the international progress that has been made; rather than throw in the towel we should get deeper into the heart of Brussels and work to make the system better for everyone not just for England. We narrowly avoided breaking the union with Scotland last year, thankfully, and now we need to pray that people will have the vision and the hope for the future to see that in 50 or even 100 years a joined up commercial and social union for Europe has got to be better than being on our own. I hear many arguments from people about ceding control of our sovereignty to Brussels or - for some even worse - to Berlin. But my instinct is to urge everyone to think about how much Europe suffered during the 20th century; the peoples of greater Europe can remember both the world wars and their countries being conquered and overrun. If the primary urge of the EU were to promote international harmony and integration and simultaneously dilute partisan Nationalism, I would say hurrah to that. By working together towards commonality we must be helping to build a better world for future generations, even if on the way we encounter frustrations over sausage regulations or too many unfamiliar faces for a few years.

Various writings