As someone with ADHD and debilitating allergy to bureaucracy, I can’t help but relate.
Sure. Yet you will still find ways to pay your taxes, apply for passports, obey the traffic rules, etc. You either fight through it yourself and/or have people around you helping with what is most difficult for you. It doesn't mean these rules and obligations don't apply to you.
It was on a trip back from the UK in 2022, when they visited their second son in Brighton, that they first learned they should have made a formal application to stay in Sweden after Brexit.
Honestly: how can you, after hearing/seeing Theresa May on all channels and newspapers in Europe year after year repeating her "Brexit means Brexit!!!" mantra, be under the impression for so long that this won't affect you, a foreign national living abroad? Because they are British? Because Brexit would only mean they can't come to us, while we are still free to go wherever we please? I can't help to feel some amount of arrogance emanating from this.
She said her husband had been meticulous at keeping up with news relevant to British people in Sweden and had taken responsibility for all the administration in their household. She was sure he would have made the Brexit application had he known about it.
I mean, we aren't in the 50s any more. She's her own person and has her own responsibilities. Also, the article mentions a family (son + grandchildren) in Sweden, so they weren't alone these last 10 years. That would be one of the first things I'd ask them as their son after the Brexit vote passed: mum, dad, have you sorted out your citizenship here? This is serious.