So much badness happening to so many friends and loved ones at the moment, and it's powerfully sad. My dear friend Shirin has had a relapse of her cancer, and the outlook doesn't look good at all. And yet, my own life feels good in lots of ways - hard to feel happy when so much that is terrible is happening, and when I do, feel strangely guilty.

Nevertheless, I'm just back from Belfast, where the event I set up went pretty well, and I was very pleased with it. Also, I have a camera on my phone now -

This is Bob playing with Hoboerotica on Saturday night:



And here are some pics from a market outside Belfast City Hall:







And my new flat! (taken on digital camera)

Many of you by now will be aware of the works of Professor Robert Kingham - the orginator of the Ackroyd London walks and more recently Align - raconteur, flaneur, force majeur etc. etc. But not all of you will have seen his band, the unsettling yet risibly correct HOBOEROTICA.

Well, they're playing in Stockwell on Saturday. You should come.

HOBOEROTIC LIVE
When: Saturday 28 November 2009
Where: The Cavendish Arms, Stockwell
Starts: 7:30pm
Tickets: £6
Full details: www.hoboerotica.co.uk

Back in Streatham from Dalston in just about an hour - not too shabby. Fantastic time at Black Plastic tonight - laughing along to Cubik with ultraruby, everyone hugging class_worrier, perfectlyvague looking fabulous, talking nonsense with katstevens, talking FE funding with carsmilesteve (it's how we roll), exliontamer laying down "The Visitors" by Abba in a blistering set, scissorkicks doing a similarly blistering set then giving out copies of it on CD, p_dan_tic doing a very scaled down mosh, waiting for shewho to turn up when Macca came on etc. etc. etc. Now awake for 22 hours. Must go to bed.

Typically beautiful ride home across London. Good night Shoreditch, good night Bank, good night St. Paul's. Good night South Bank, good night Parliament, good night Thames. Good night ladies. Good night sweet ladies. Good night.

So this week. Two major bits of work cancelled, but was still stupidly busy. Managed to cock up Thursday night in spectacular fashion, and miss out on Shunt and lowlowprices birthday. Didn't go out last night - although did enjoy spending a whole day in my flat bumming around and doing nowt.

Friday at work was fun, where we had a meeting with outreach people from all the other assemblies and Parliaments, and the youth outreach team from the GLA praised me extensively, including the backhanded compliment that I was proof that you don't have to be young to communicate effectively to young people. *shakes fist* Bloody kids! Heh heh.

Also, pageantmalarkey's sitcom thing on Monday just gone - very, very good indeed. At least, it was when it got to hers, and the one directly afterwards. Fingers crossed for the semi-final tomorrow.

Good things today - I liked Doctor Who. It wasn't absolutely fantastic, but it looked great (thanks to Grahame "The Guvnor" Harper) and the ending was a genuine attempt to do something different, even if they did back away from it a bit right at the death.

And - Saint Etienne. Got the "Foxbase Beta" reworking today, which has a sort of director's commentary on it, where we learn: 1) Pete and Bob love "Dazzle Ships" 2) They understand why "myriad of" is wrong, and 3) They do a "Look Around You" gag.

Oh yes, and I keep reading the headline on the Yahoo page as "UK braced for more weather". pageantmalarkey is right - why is the weather news and weather? In the words of Roosevelt P. Roosevelt, "You gotta window? Open it."

I went to IKEA for the first time ever yesterday - truly, I am now a man. It wasn't as horrific as I'd feared - it wasn't too busy, and the behaviour of the shoppers was generally polite and a little bewildered, so I fit right in. A group of girls were even getting their photo taken round one of the tables, pretending to be at a dinner party. I bought a wardrobe, bedside cabinet, some chairs, and some doormats, pleasingly called "Boris". I also recommend the hot dogs, which are exceedingly good value.

Putting it all together was relatively stress free - Dad and Lin helped, and I only managed to hurt myself badly once, although I did explode with rage when one of my old bookcases collapsed as we were about to go out to dinner. Couldn't that have happened before I went to the enormous shop with all the bookcases in it?

Last Thursday I went to a course on devolution in the UK run by NCVO. So far, so not terribly interesting. But it was on Regents Wharf, up past Kings Cross, quite near Copenhagen Street. Very near here, a million years ago, suzanne219 lived, when we were first going out. I arrived stupidly early, so took a walk round the block, first doing the "Bittersweet Symphony" route backwards up Caledonian Road (I didn't barge over any pensioners, or walk on anyone's car), then round the corner to Copenhagen Street, past the Tolpuddle Martyrs mural, then on to the street where S. used to live.

It's such a funny thing, memory, isn't it? The flats were where I remembered them, albeit to the side of the road, rather than at the end of it. I had thought that it probably wouldn't trigger much memory, as so much time had passed, and S. had only lived there for a year or so after I first met her. But as soon as I saw them a lot of memories came flooding back - all of them very happy, I have to say - I'm not sure I've ever been as happy as I was in the mid-to-late 90s. Some of them were trivial and silly, some private, but all good. I then walked past them on to the canalside - I don't remember being able to do that, but the exit must always have been there. Did we walk along the canal? I can't remember. There was a pub nearby we used to go to, which I think turned up in Spaced once. It all feels like another era, another world.

Don't even get me started on the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down. It does seem like quite a while ago, but I was pretty much fully grown when that happened.

I've probably come very late to this particular party, but I've just downloaded a brilliant program that automatically converts and downloads YouTube vids to MP3. I spent most of yesterday looking at stuff I've been trying to get MP3s of for ages - including the 12" versh of Suede's "Stay Together", some tracks by Bob, "The Happy One" by New Order (which I've never had any sort of version of at all) and the original version of Rui Da Silva's "Touch Me" with the Spandau Ballet sample in it.

Today I am sorting through papers and the last remaining boxes in my flat. F*ck me, it's boring.

With assistance from the splendid nudejournal and lowlowprices I got the last of my stuff into the new flat last Saturday. So that's that. People have asked me if I feel excited about it, but I've just been too tired and stressed out, both about the move and work, for that yet. I have felt relieved, and occasionally mildly pleased. Perhaps the excitement will come later. At the moment, it feels like something of a victory, but like one of those First World War victories, where a tiny amount of land is gained at a disproportionate cost.

I've been stupidly, stupidly busy and to be honest, I'm a bit concerned that the presentations etc. I've done have suffered because I can't devote 100% of my mental energy to them. I hope people have been finding them as useful and interesting as I would hope. It's the one thing I do at work that I like to think I'm really good at, but I've not felt that way too much of late. And I missed kisobel's wedding, which was a bugger.

I have been to Cardiff, Exeter, Manchester and Edinburgh in the past fortnight and quite frankly, I'm actually looking forward to staying in London for a while. Not that I haven't enjoyed being in any of these places - often travelling with, or meeting, colleagues and old friends in each, but travel is tiring, and I guess with the new flat and the nights drawing in I'm feeling a bit of a nesting instinct. I did manage to see Fulham play Hull, for no other reason than my boss, Clare, wanted some of us to go with her and soak up all the atmosphere of Craven Cottage, and thanks to Elliot, I got to see Bad Lieutenant, and hang out (sort of) with Barney Sumner and Steven Morris! Far too starstruck to say anything to them. ETA - the gig was pretty amazing, too. I hadn't been sure about going, but it was free, and I was curious to see what it was like. The BL songs themselves were okay - some were really pretty good, but the whole thing just took off into the stratosphere when they did the old New Order/Joy Division stuff - Crystal, Transmission, Temptation, a really beautiful acoustic version of Bizarre Love Triangle and Love Will Tear Us Apart. It all made an old man very happy.

I met an old friend from university days on Tuesday night - Jon Brooker (who is my friend on Facebook now so if you're reading this - hello!) and we did a 16 year catch-up and got a bit drunk, which was great. I'm always amazed by how little my uni friends seem to have aged/changed - I look so different from how I did then, and not in a particularly good way.

I'm on a train back from Edinburgh right now, and reflecting on the fact that if it weren't for these trips away, I'd never write on here! What this is really telling me is that I'm not creating enough time/space for myself to think and be calm and gather my thoughts. Which I should do something about, as it's probably what's made me feel so agitated recently. I hope that in the next few weeks I may be out and about more often - so long since I've seen so many people.

So I'm still not in my flat, not quite yet. Various very lovely people - nudejournal, internetsdairy, sleeperesque (and her Brighton Guy) and lowlowprices - came round yesterday and helped move many ridiculously heavy boxes and bookcases down into it, but completion is set for this Thursday, and I will finally, finally move in on Saturday. Whew. And perfectlyvague sent me a wonderful moving-in present, which made the day complete. Now all I need to do is move in!

It's been an age since I last wrote on here - in the meantime:

- I've been horribly sick and had to duck out of an event in Glasgow
- I met a extremely nice young woman in a pub in the City, who wants to do volunteer work for Parliamentary Outreach
- I've been introduced to the pleasures of Benito's Hat by whatsagirlgotta
- And introduced to the pleasures of Randall and Aubin by lowlowprices and i_jobot
- Travelled north to the wilds of Mornington Crescent to celebrate ultraruby's birthday
- Joined fellow well-wishers to celebrate perfectlyvague's completion of a half-marathon
- Attended the recording of a radio play about Guy Fawkes by the Penny Dreadfuls - this was really rather excellent. I hadn't seen/heard any of their work before, and it rattled along with the requisite balance between clever and stupid jokes. And Kevin Eldon was in it, and was reliably great.
- Run three really good outreach sessions - for the Dalit Freedom Network, for a group of social policy students at Royal Holloway and for a group of UK Youth Parliament delegates.
- Been the target of quite unnecessary rudeness from a Tory MP
- Went to see my first Wagner opera (and only my second opera ever) with monkeyssk8 at the Royal Opera House. It was Tristan und Isolde, and even though it was over four hours long, the theatre was too warm, my seat too narrow, the view of the peformers obstructed for about 80 per cent. of the time etc. etc. I rather enjoyed it. It had that resonant quality very good things have, when bits of it keep rising to the surface of your mind unbidden during the days afterwards. And I saw George Osborne there (he wasn't the MP who was rude to me; he was just standing in the foyer, minding his own business)
- Went for a delicious dinner at Belgos in Covent Garden with Wez and Jane and a crowd of really lovely people. I drank a lot of cherry beer.

So I've been quite busy. And I'm utterly exhausted - I still haven't quite shaken the last remnants of the cold/bug I've had for the past three weeks.

I just walked up to Clapham in the pale autumn sun - it takes me nearly 45 minutes now; it used to take about half an hour from the old flat. I walked past a road I used to walk along when I worked as a teacher and I had just moved to London - I used to walk to work every morning from Streatham, quite near where I now live, to Clapham South. On the corner was a flat, which had been a corner shop all that time ago (14 years!) The flat itself looked scuffed and lived in - all this wear and tear had occurred in the interim period since I had last bothered to look at this spot.

Strange how something so innocuous can catch you unawares. I was suddenly overwhelmed with the enormity of the sheer amount of time that had passed since I had first moved to London, first taught at SFX, first met Suzanne. It's such a cliched question, but where does the time go? I feel as if I wasted so much of it, was glibly unaware of the needs of the future, of my needs in the future. And was so aware of how different I have become - I feel in many ways as I had been smashed by things that happened four or five years ago, like I kind of disintegrated. Now, somehow, I have gathered the bits up and stuck them together in a way that gives me some coherence, and some sense of purpose, but I feel as if big chunks of me are gone, lost forever. And so much regret, and so much remorse. Sometimes it's hard to bear.

This probably all sounds terribly sad, and it is, really. But it's pretty small beer - I have a job I love, and finally, a place to call my own. I'm quite lucky.

The work thing I was supposed to be doing in Galashiels wasn't cancelled. I'm sitting on the train from Glasgow to London now, listening to "Petrococadollar" by Scritti Politti, watching the Scottish countryside roll by. It's very calm.

I travelled to Glasgow on Thursday afternoon, and was delighted to be met by neil_scott, femme_latale, zagreb2 and majea - we ate veggie burgers in a cafe with a menu that diminished as we spoke, and talked and drank beer. And I get to go again on Tuesday for pub quizzing. I really like Glasgow.

The presentation thing went quite well, although the turnout was small. It always feels good going to towns that are off the beaten track, and Galashiels, as somewhere that doesn't have a railway station, is not always best served. I drove down with a chap from CEMVO who had trained to be a priest for two years, and has just become a Dad. He told me lots of interesting stuff about Scotland and its politics. We met some fascinating people in Gala - the cleverest man in the world, who was from Zambia, and had lived in Hawick for 14 years, a woman who dealt with equality issues for the NHS, and had worked in the Met in Notting Hill in the late 80s where she became committed to working on equality matters after a gay colleague committed suicide, and a man who may or may not have been Burmese, who was still put out about having to be flown back from Iraq in 2004 for a day in order to pay his council tax.

God, the countryside in Scotland is beautiful. I wish I had a phone camera so I could show you what I can see from my window right now.

I met my Dad, his missus and my sister in Glasgow last night for late dinner at the hotel. They've been in Fochabers, Elgin and Inverness researching the family tree. They'd found an advert in a paper from 1880 with an advert placed by my great great great etc. grandfather for his tailors/drapers business. It offered calico and promised that customers would enjoy its quality "so long as it lasts" - which sounds like a bit of a hedged bet to me.

This morning a mouse ran across the dining room as we were having breakfast and half the diners left immediately. I didn't, obv. There was breakfast to be eaten. My sister saw it first, and I'm afraid I did say to her, "Don't shout or everyone will want one." They got me loads of good presents - including series 2 of The Wire and that John Adams series on DVD. I now do not have to leave the house for the next fortnight.

See you all in London.

I was talking to Elliot at the weekend about the need to guard against just doing LJ posts to seek sympathy or reassurance, but I've had such a crappy day, I'm going to do it anyway.

I went to bed with a sore throat, that hasn't really got much better through the day, the cleaners have not really done a particularly good job, but I couldn't be bothered arguing the toss with them to get a discount. There's still stuff in the flat that needs getting rid of, and I've had to beg a friend to drive over from Surbiton to take me to the 24-hour tip tonight, when I should just be curling up with a Lemsip. I'm supposed to be doing some work in Galashiels on Friday, and then meeting my Dad and sis in Glasgow in the evening, but that looks like it's been cancelled. The arrangements I made to meet loads of people in Glasgow on Monday evening were all f*cked up when another work thing changed dates at the last minute.

Every stage of this move has gone wrong. Someone or other - including me on more than one occasion - has bollocksed some crucial part of it up. And I still don't know when I'm actually going to move into my actual flat. Mum phoned me back at the old flat, and I just reeled off the list of irritations, obstacles and f*ck ups, none of which are catastrophic in themselves, but collectively, have worn me down and down. When she wished me a happy birthday - it's my 39th tomorrow - I nearly started crying. I haven't felt this down in ages - which I suppose is quite a good sign really - but I would very much like things to take a turn for the better, even if it's just a little one.

Okay, so I went to the Windmill in Brixton to see charleston play with The Nuns, and it was aces. I went with Eliot (formerly egremont of this parish) and drank beer, and smoked fags, and laughed and talked to exliontamer about music, and met lots of people again, and promised them various things (which I'm writing here so I don't forget - namely, a John Robb tune, and a Bladerunner soundtrack) and saw a former member of Echobelly making up Duran Duran lyrics with Charley's name in them and just generally Had A Good Time. The Nuns were pretty ace too - an all woman line-up performing songs by The Monks. Charley's bass was satisfyingly crunchy - Roobarb and Custard bass, as Eliot put it. You could almost see the birds laughing and falling out of the tree.

It was also my last day in the house with lowlowprices, in a way, as I helped him move the last of his stuff into storage and we went for late lunch. It felt like the end of an era, which it is, in a way.

And now I'm drunk, and foraging through the leftover bits of the evening's chat - such as the fact that the indie band Cooper Temple Clause are named after a provision in the Education Act 1870 that allows people to take their children out of religious education, a spectacular array of northern malapropisms, courtesy of Eliot, and the fact that "The Visitors" by Abba is the best thing they ever did. I'm also a bit drunk, which is probably obvious.

We finished the evening in a sort of illicit smokers outhouse, and I inadvertently did the jedi mind trick on Charley to get out. It was that sort of evening.

So I moved yesterday - into a new flat, albeit not my new flat. I'm now on the top floor of my new address, as opposed to the basement, in the flat I'm actually buying. But this flat is nice. I'm afraid I won't want to leave - two good sized bedrooms, views across to Crystal Palace, lots of space.

The move went incredibly smoothly - massive thanks due to Steve A. and rhodri - I hadn't thought I'd need much help, but without them it would have been immeasurably more difficult. Plus the ever-reliable and very competitively priced folks at eazy2move. The whole thing took about an hour and forty minutes, although being very out of shape, I was v. hot and sweaty by the end of it. Steve and I adjourned to the Balham Bowls Club for a celebratory pint or two, and bumped into lots of his friends at random. It all made me v. glad I'm not leaving this corner of south-west London.

Some of you have asked, incredulously, how I've managed to get on the internet so quickly. Well, I cheated. My Dad bought me a pay-as-you-go broadband USB stick, and it came with 30 days free access (if you pay for a minimum £10 top up along with the price of the stick) and it should tide me over until I can come up with something more permanent. One gripe though - is it really necessary to have a default content lock switched on that blocks, among other things, YouTube and Flickr? Ridiculous.

I went to Homebase earlier - I've never spent so much money on things that I couldn't give a toss about (but must have, such as bins, ironing board, cutlery etc.) My Dad played a blinder though - getting me there, and to the old flat, and buying lunch, and aformentioned broadband gizmo, and bringing round and setting up new PC. The day ended perfectly, with drinks and dinner by the river with the lovely perfectlyvague - being pleasantly drunk in company by the banks of the Thames for teh win.

I am moving today - into my temporary new home before my flat becomes vacant. I'm not sure how long it will be after today before I'm on full-time internet again, but hopefully not too long. Wish me luck; I'll need it.

I'm in Cardiff right now, in what may be the funkiest, most modern hotel I've ever stayed in. It's a cheapish one, right by the station - I have a cinematic view out of my roller-blinded window of the mainline railway and a huge advertising hoarding. Tomorrow morning I'm off to Llandrindod Wells with a chap from the Electoral Commission to meet an assemblage of electoral officers (a declaration of electoral officers?) for work. I had wondered whether it was the right idea to go right in the middle of the move, but it's actually quite pleasant to get away from the dust, cardboard boxes and fretting. The train journey was a bit packed - commuters having that sort of low-level party that commuters who live far enough away from London seem to have on inter city trains - but I did see a sunset beautiful enough that it even made Reading look good.

Things are looking up a bit with the move - the vendor called today to let me know that the tenants may have already found somewhere to move to, and should be out before 22nd October, so I shouldn't have to wait too long.

Perhaps also against my better judgment, I'm helping out with Open House on Sunday afternoon, in the central lobby of the Houses of Parliament, so do drop by and say hello!

Gregory's Girl is on BBC4! Chic Murray! John Gordon Sinclair being gawky! Lovely, lovely Clare Grogan! I remember seeing this at the cinema on a double bill with, of all things, Chariots of Fire. I felt a lot more Scottish then - I remember fair welling up when Eric Liddell won his medal, and Gregory's Girl seemed like home. In fact, it still feels a bit like going home when I'm in Scotland, even though I'm about as Scottish as Rod Stewart now.

Oh man - I nearly forgot. So many good people died the other day: Keith Floyd, the only celebrity chef worthy of beinga celebrity, Brian Barren, another one of those old school journalists who actually reported news gone and saddest of all for me, Troy Kennedy Martin, who wrote one of the most enjoyable British films ever, The Italian Job (and also wrote the script for the equally entertaining and daffy Kelly's Heroes) and what I still reckon is the best thing ever screened on television, Edge of Darkness. It's only got one gag, but it's a lovely one, delivered by Joe Don Baker's CIA agent, Darius Jedburgh, watching "Come Dancing" - "Nobody dances like the British. You deserved the Falklands." RIP Troy.

If anyone is free during the day next Tuesday and would like to give me a hand with the move, I'd be most grateful. It'll start at about 3.30 pm, and I doubt it'll take much longer than 3 hours at the most. And there'll be a pint (or two) in it for you.

Call from vendor an hour ago - he has been looking for places tenants can move to. They looked at one yesterday and really liked it, and MAY move out by the end of next week. I think the main thing that's cheered me about this news is that it looks as if the tenants really do want to move on, and had just baulked at being given seven days' notice to do so, quite understandably.

I think I'll still end up living in the flat upstairs from my flat, but just for a week or so rather than a month.

In other "what's that all about?" news, my PC is still playing up. Thought I'd managed to fix the problem by running the network setup wizard, but now problem has come back, and running setup wizard not making any difference. It seems that there is some error whereby my PC is not releasing its IP address to the router. Anyway, I'm getting a new PC after I've moved, so I suppose it's not really worth worrying about.

My desktop PC won't connect to the internet. I don't know why. The network connections manager is registering the connection as active, my laptop will connect fine via wireless, but I've restarted the PC twice, tried system restore to a point where it would work and nothing. It just suddenly stopped connecting while I was using Firefox, and now neither this nor IE will connect. Anyone experienced a similar problem?

So this is what happened. The vendor made a big cock-up and gave the tenants the wrong completion date - Oct 22nd, rather than Sept 22nd. And, perhaps understandably, they've refused to move by Tuesday next week. He phoned me up this morning and offered to give me the intervening period, rent free, in a flat in the same house, and to pay for a new bed for my own flat (which currently doesn't have one). In return, I agree to complete on 22nd Oct instead.

So far so good, and it beat putting all my stuff in storage and finding somewhere else to live for three weeks. But my solicitor wasn't having any of it. I had a long conversation with her, which put the fear of God into me, as she felt vendor had lied, was not to be trusted etc etc and felt that tenants would not leave by 22nd. She feared they were scamming in some way - apparently if you're from another EU country and you are evicted, the council have a duty to house you (and apparently, the tenants are Spanish) She also thought it likely that no rent agreement existed between tenants and landlord.

To cut a long story short, she contacted vendor's solicitor, found out that tenants DO have a rent agreement (so that's something), varied completion date to 22nd October, and if property is not vacant and ship-shape by that date, then our contract is null and void. I move into flat upstairs as planned, saving me a month's rent/mortgage and gaining a free bed for new flat.

Which is all fine, except, what if she's right and tenants don't move out? Vendor under no obligation to house me in other flat and I have nowhere to live. But if I don't agree to this deal, I have nowhere to live from Sept 30 anyway. What a mess. I just have to hope that tenants live up to their side of the bargain and trust vendor to sort it out, which I do, I think. But I'm not sure what he can do if they don't move. He can evict them of course, but that takes months and months. I'd have to turn my back on the flat and find somewhere else.

It's awful - I just feel I'm constantly waiting for the next massive thing to go wrong, but I can't walk away.

I'm packing, by degrees. Nearly all the books done now, but CDs and DVDs await, and then that awful, awful bit where more and more stuff keeps appearing as if from nowhere.

I'm also putting the finishing touches to a mix of 80s and 80s inflected pop for the impending nuptials of internetsdairy and drummygirl and I have a mini dilemma. I really really love The Girl and the Robot by Royksopp and want to include it, but I think the lyrics (about a girl whose partner is always out at work leaving her on her own) are too too sad for a wedding. Have a listen and tell me what you think.

At the risk of making advertisers and marketers jobs easier, I have to say I am actually enjoying the wall-to-wall Beatles coverage at the moment. It was once a project that suzanne219 and I had to acquire all their albums on vinyl. Sadly, that came to naught, and now I don't even have a record player, so getting all the remasters would seem a good idea (if only I could find a spare £170) I even bought the NME the other day, for the first time in about 18 years, to read all the reviews of the Beatles albums. Some of them were pretty well written, (although one or two exhibited the "look at me! look at me!" quality described by Stuart Maconie in "Lloyd Cole Knew My Father") considering the dip in reputation the mag has suffered over the years. I had intended to write something lengthy and reflective about how brilliant "Eleanor Rigby" is, and how it's haunted and beguiled me through the years, but just dig it out and listen to it - it says it all better than I ever could.

Have exchanged contracts and will be moving in to new flat, barring accidents, on 22nd September. Now all I need to do is pack everything I own into stupid cardboard boxes.

Thank you to all who wished well, or offered to help! Work has been dead busy, so haven't had time to reply to everybody. I'm on leave now till the 24th, but most of my time will be taken up with packing I suspect.

I went to exchange contracts today, and discovered that all my mortgage documents, contract etc. have the wrong flat number on them. Not my fault - it seems to be a confusion on the part of the vendor.

It shouldn't be too big a problem - all the surveys were done on the right flat, and the price and everything are correct. BUT WHY CAN'T IT JUST BE FINISHED?

I think I need to go and have a little lie down and a cry somewhere. Unfortunately, I have to go to the GLA and give a presentation about Parliament instead.