I'm sympathetic to your situation Raddoc2010.
If you are flexible, and have cash, a good strategy might be to look out for good Club World cash fares/sales and book those when they become available (like the recent 20% off sale).
Then keep an eye open for possible upgrades using Avios to First. Alternatively you may find good prices for a cash upgrade to First.

If you book cash fares now, the booking with confidence policy means that you can cancel them any time and bank the value with BA in a future travel voucher.
Thus if you preferred to pay the entire First fare using Avios, if seats become available you can do that and then cancel your CW tickets and put the value into an FTV.
Of course, it does depend on how much cash you have and if you are willing to loan BA the value of the CW tickets for a period of time.