New beginnings this New Year...

I hope all of you had a very Merry Christmas and Santa brought you everything you wanted. Christmas was a family affair once again for me this year, and back in Birmingham my family and I ate Christmas lunch at a fabulous restaurant at the top of the Mailbox building...

What a treat to avoid the stresses of hungover Christmas day cooking and terrible Christmas TV. While you can't beat Christmas at home, we discovered a couple of years ago that having the meal itself at a lovely restaurant can avoid a partly frozen turkey, tonnes of washing up, and the teenage boredom and angst of my 19 year old brother that comes hand in hand with spending the whole day stuck at home.

I was a very lucky girl this year when it came to presents... One of my top gifts this year was a silver bracelet with my name engraved - which my mum had hidden in a Christmas cracker I pulled at the meal.

When it came to surprises my beautiful boyfriend G gave me a lovely treat... On Christmas eve he rang my mobile and said has my parcel arrived yet, go check the doorstep to see if they left it there. I opened the door and there he was! He whisked me off shopping to choose my prezzie - he wanted to buy me a dress to wear when we go away for New Year, and he needed to have me there really to pick one I loved and try it on. I chose a beautiful purple silk one from Selfridges - I will upload some pics of our New Year night away so you can see it yourselves! I feel a very lucky girl to have a man spoil me so much, but it was more the thoughtful aspect of him wanting to surprise me on the doorstep than the actual gift that meant so much to me. (Didn't tell him that though as I still wanted the dress!)

The gifts I got him were far less poignant and romantic - two PS3 games, and I took him to a football match on boxing day... What can you do though it's what he wanted! I had thought out romantic ideas for presents, perhaps a meal at the restaurant where we had our 1st date... But I know we would have got there and he would have said can I have my PS3 games now. Boys and their toys!

He will have to tear himself away from the PS3 for one night though when we go away for New Year. We've booked into a lovely hotel in Bournemouth to spend New Year. I can't wait, it means a lot to be with him to see in 2009 and Bournemouth as a town means a great deal to me too as I spent 3 happy years at University there.

Our time together is limited as I'm back to London the very next day and we will part at the train station. He can expect tears from an over emotional and undoubtedly hungover me, but I am looking forward to getting back to my fun life in London and seeing what 2010 holds for me...perhaps G will move down before the year is through.

I hope you all have a fabulous New Year and wake on the 1st with a hangover but a smile, who knows what 2010 will bring! x

Merry Christmas

It's that time of year again, when everyone heads back to their roots to be with family, battling the snow covered roads and delayed public transport.

Like so many others I packed up my bags and laden with presents set off back to Birmingham, my home town, to spend Christmas with my family and boyfriend.

This year, in the midst of a recession, I wondered whether Christmas would be a parred down affair. I've read in the news that companies won't have Christmas parties for staff this year, that people are attempting to make their own presents not buy them. Home made or not, drunken Christmas party or not, it appears to me that people are celebrating the season as enthusiastically as ever this year. On my journey back home I was pleased to see most people had gone to town with Christmas lights. In addition to this, the shops do not seem to have suffered this year with Christmas shopping. Which bodes well for my presents - I can't imagine what I would receive should my brother take it upon himself to start hand making gifts.

What are your plans this Christmas? Whatever they are I hope you enjoy your time with family and friends. Eat, drink and be merry. And remember, Santa comes tonight so however merry you get make sure you behave!

Happy Christmas everyone x

Entry to Embassy

Another night another nightclub...

And this time it was the turn of Embassy nightclub in Mayfair to wow me for the evening, with their fabulous Christmas decor accessorised by famous faces at every turn.

How did I, a lesser known mortal gain entry? It's all about who you know, and luckily two of my well connected friends from school were down in London for the night and got the three on the list....

We had a fabulous night, albeit fairly sober due to the drinks prices.

Christmas is the time for festive drinks but I don't want January to be the time for a festive overdraft so I resolved to limit myself to only one or two glasses.

Mingling with the rich and famous it is easy to forget you don't have their kind of resources... anyway, who said a girl can't have a good time sober?

It was lovely being with old friends for the night surrounded by the glamour of a lifestyle not quite in reach.

The best bit of the night though might have been returning to the lovely hotel in Mayfair where they were booked in for the night, collapsing in to the huge super king size bed with them and ordering room service. By 2am we were eating smoked salmon sandwiches in bed and watching sky news as we dozed off...

Such hardcore party animals!

What is your claim to fame?

Everyone loves to be in the spotlight. In the UK we are obsessed with celebrity, we want to know everything about them, aspire to be them, and can't get enough of them.

It makes me wonder how close all of us have got to being in the public eye? While standing at the edges did any of us make it in to the spotlight and what brought us there?

Perhaps for some reading this their moment in the limelight is yet to come. Perhaps for some it briefly shone on them and now they are back among the crowd. And for others, they may never be rich and famous, or mingle with the rich famous and they may never want to.

I personally can't say my life has been filled with celebrity, although it is getting a little closer to that recently...

My (shockingly poor) claims to fave thus far in the 23 years of my life include.....

I dated for just over a year the brother of a famous TV presenter, Giles Vickers Jones. I can mention that on here because I am still good friends with his brother and we often wind Giles up about his so called 'celebrity' life. Presenting for GMTV, E! Entertainment and ITV at the Movies has not made him a mega celeb but he's a little more in that circle than the rest of us.

Before that relationship I once kissed an X factor finalist while I was in my second year of University at Bournemouth and they came to the town on the X factor tour.... it is highly embarrassing. It is too embarrassing to give away the name but it was the year Leona Lewis won, his name began with B and he may have been known for his unconventional hair... Those of you as into X Factor as I am will know who I am referring to. But a lady will never kiss and tell! (she just hints).

Other than these two encounters with the male celebrity species I have been somewhat protected from the glamour and gossip that comes from being immersed in the celeb circuit. That is until now, where my new job means I speak to someone in the public eye every day, and occasionally meet up to discuss work...

It makes me smile if I read his name on the net or a magazine, to think that I know him, I get a buzz from the fact that others can only speculate but I have some degree of insider knowledge into someone high profile's life.

For now, this is the nearest I get to mingling with the celebs, texting and emailing my secret boss, and the occasional overpriced night at Funky Buddha or China white. I'm not very close to being in the limelight, I'm still watching the glamorous few from a distance. But I'm a hell of a lot closer than I was a year ago reading Heat Magazine at home in Birmingham. x x x

New Abode on the horizon - will I finally escape student living?

After three years of house sharing while at university, one might assume that when you collect your degree you leave those days behind you. I assumed this to be the case. How wrong I was.... In the three years since I left uni, I lived a more grown up life of cohabiting with a boyfriend, and even living and working abroad for a year. But necessity spoke and in moving to London, or "emigrating" here as my Grandma described it, I took the easy option of moving in with my student brother and some of his friends.


To be fair we aren't exactly roughing it. This isn't quite the hell hole halls I experienced first time around. My parents took advantage of fallen house prices and bought to rent when my brother knew he would be coming to London for uni.

It is a nice house, I can't complain, but I still do. For I didn't think I would be mixing with quite so many 18 year olds when I was 23. I don't care to know about the student union nights and which societies at Freshers week were giving out the best goodies.

I am past the stage of teaching fellow housemates how to use a washing machine and cook, and waking to find strangers in the house the next morning, not knowing whether the sofa or a housemates bed has been their place of rest.

I am fast tiring of the mother figure role I seem to have found myself in. (Mother figure is how I describe it they call it something all together less flattering.)

It would be nice to get back to some privacy and independence from the mayhem. It would be nice to be able to invite my boss around when we have changes to make to documents. Instead of which we can currently be found huddled in a crowded Starbucks hoping for Internet signal and knocking coffee over the laptop.

A lifeline appeared this week when an old friend of mine from University noticed my facebook status and got in touch saying she was looking for a flatmate to find somewhere in Camden from late Jan.

When I say old friend, we actually lived together for two years of uni along with 6 other girls. Of all of them I got on with Bex the best. She has a healthy appetite for shopping and fun like myself, and if we could indulge these hobbies in Bournemouth just think what we could do together in central London.

Here comes the tricky bit.... Bex and I stopped talking right at the end of uni. She began seeing someone from our course who I had had brief thing with that year. This is before I met G and before Bex was ever interested in this guy. Neither Bex or I had done anything wrong to one another it was just one of those uncomfortable situations. Suddenly our course mate who I had history with was around our house all the time and everyone found the situation weird. Luckily it was only about 3 months until we handed in our dissertations and packed up our lives in Bournemouth for good. But the result of these events meant Bex and the male trouble maker dated for the next three years and she always found it too weird to continue her friendship with me.


I didn't feel any great loss from the situation, I moved to Thailand for a year with G and am embarrassed to admit a lot of my friendships back in the UK took a back seat to my new life there. Once back in England, I heard through the grapevine Bex was working and living in London. About 6 months ago she added me as a friend on facebook. Then 6 weeks ago I noticed she and our mutual male had split up and she was listed as single and looking for fun.

I don't know what happened to break them up it would be inappropriate to ask but I did wonder if it would mean she got back in touch with me. Then all of a sudden yesterday, a voice from the past enquired whether I would like to search for somewhere to live together in Camden.

I am excited on a number of levels - firstly I may actually leave behind student life once and for all. Secondly, it seems as though this is an olive branch offering and Bex and I could still have a friendship despite a three year absence from each others lives. I don't know many people in London and Bex was like a sister until a man came between us.

Funny isn't it, how you come back around to the important friendships in your life, but almost all love relationships have an expiry date.

What would you do?

Me with my cousins daughter aged 2 weeks.

Working for the website http://www.pureadam.com/ I am often on discussion boards and groups where very sensitive issues are raised, and people ask advice about the difficult decisions they find themselves faced with.

Viewing these discussions has made me question my own standpoint on some things, and I thought I would cover this on my blog. Perhaps it will allow you to question what your own decision would be in the same circumstance....


Would you conceive with donated sperm?


It isn't any ones first choice of conception, but for many sperm donation is the last resort to having a child. If I was single and approaching my 40s, or in a relationship with a man who had fertility problems, I have recently wondered whether I would consider sperm donation. The thought of being inseminated with the sperm of a stranger does not sit comfortably with me. However it sits far more comfortably than the concept of a life without having children, so I think that yes, in certain circumstances I would choose sperm donation. In regards to this, I can see why people use a site such as PureAdam. Sperm donation would seem a little less daunting if the sperm did not come from a complete stranger. If you could at least have seen what that person looked like and communicated with them in some way it would be less of an unknown. I believe many of our users feel more confident having hand picked a donor themselves from the site, rather than from a random donation at a sperm bank.


Would you allow your husband to donate sperm?


This has been a topic on some discussion boards I've viewed recently. I must say that no, controlling or selfish as it may reflect me to be, I would not allow my husband to donate sperm. Purely for the fear that somewhere down the line there may be a grown adult seeking a father figure from my husband. However, if I embarked on a new relationship with someone who revealed they had donated sperm in the past, I would accept that as a part of who they were when I met them. In fact I think it would put them in a good light in my eyes - donating sperm is a selfless act and they may have made someones life and family complete by choosing to donate. Ironic isn't it - that I would admire sperm donation as a past act of compassion, but forbid such a move in my own marriage. Well I never claimed to be a straight forward kind of woman...


Would you tell your child they were donor conceived?

A further debate on sperm donation is whether or not to inform the child. The overwhelming opinion on the discussion forums is that yes, most people plan to or have told their child of their unusual conception. My own standpoint? I would tell my child they were donor conceived and hope that they took from that my heartfelt desire to have them. Sperm donation is a length those who are desperate for a child will go to in order to make that wish come true. Instead of feeling embarrassed or confused, I hope any resulting children feel absolutely wanted by the mothers who embarked on such a journey to have them.

Absence makes the heart...go shopping to fill the void!

A strange mix of emotions this weekend as my boyfriend, who I left behind in Birmingham, came down for the weekend to visit.

It feels comforting being with him, like coming home. It has been a long three weeks and many phone calls and texts since we last saw each other and I was thrilled when he turned up after work on Friday night.

My boyfriend, let's call him G, is an engineer back in Birmingham. He doesn't have much interest in moving to London. He is happy in the small town we both come from, Walsall in the West Midlands.

Still living on the road where we both grew up, and going to the same pubs every weekend with the same friends, he is content to be doing what he has been doing for the last 15 years.

I got bored and moved away, but my heart didn't move away from G, and now I hope his follows me to London.

We met during my final year of university - when I lived in Bournemouth, so we know what it is to commute for our relationship. But it was different when I was at uni living with housemates and wanting to go out every night with them. It was different when we were in the early stages of the relationship and happy to take things slowly.

Now, we are three years down the line and have lived together for two and a half of those, including a year in Thailand. It feels weird to be apart, still strange for him not to be the first person I see when I wake and the last when I fall asleep.

So this weekend I tried to show him the best of life in London in a none too subtle attempt to get him to reconsider a move. We did a spot of Christmas shopping on Oxford street where the Christmas market was in full flow. There was a carnival type atmosphere and as it grew dark around 4 o clock and the Christmas lights began to light up the street, it was the first time I have felt the festive spirit this year.

After a successful shopping trip (successful in so far as he bought me some good prezzies) we walked towards Trafalgar Square and stopped off at Planet Hollywood for dinner. Two hours, some food and a fair few cocktails later we dropped our shopping back at mine and were ready for a club, so we got the tube to Pasha in Victoria - never an easy feat in heels and feeling a little tipsy.

Pasha was a hit with G, exactly his kind of dance music, and the famous DJ re mixers Freemasons were there making a guest appearance. Personally, I could have done with a little more cheesy music and perhaps fewer queues at the bar. But then again this weekend was aimed at making G reconsider London as a possible home, and dancing the night away to the 60's Motown hits I love would certainly not have done the trick! Although not my first choice of music (or in fact many girls' - it seemed 80% men in there on Saturday?!) we stayed until they closed at 5am - and then considered visiting nightclub Ghost - which had been recommended by a man dancing wildly next to us at the bar. It apparently opens at 5am and stays open until midday Sunday.

We decided however that this was a little over ambitious for our drinking and exhaustion capabilities so we headed home to collapse into a deep sleep and relaxing hungover Sunday.

Saying goodbye to G on Sunday night was hard but I am keeping my fingers crossed that he comes back down this weekend. Well to be honest I'm keeping my fingers crossed he comes down to stay eventually but we won't push him on that subject too much just yet... a woman knows how to time these things for the maximum chance of success :-)

Wish me luck people! x x

Ooops - a blonde moment at work

Well I almost had a complete disaster today at work. After days spent perfecting the press release for the launch of PureAdam, I was moments away from sending it out to almost a thousand media outlets without so much as a mention of the website address!

I'm sure there could have been a few articles created from such a blooper - I can picture the headline now. Blonde PR girl sends excellent summary of website but fails to include the address.

It could only happen to me! Luckily my boss caught the error just in time and I made a few adjustments before sending it out to the world....

Well now it is out there and we are holding our baited breath. It's like sending your child off to school for the first time and waiting to see how they get on (although poor PureAdam, at least you are unlikely to forget to name your child).

I'm signing off now but just before I forget again - check out the site on http://www.pureadam.com/ !!

Oh what a night

Well no move to London would be complete without some fantastic nights out - what other benefits are there to living in our Nation's Capital? Well apart from the culture and history and prestige of course. But this London newbie was keen to sample the great nightlife the city had to offer....

And sample it I did! This weekend has been a mix of extremes. From a cheapo night with students on Friday to a rather more classy Saturday night at celeb hotspot Funky Buddah. What a difference a day makes and Friday and Saturday were like night and day when it came to having fun.

Friday night saw a rather exhausted 23 year old me join the freshly, just slept all afternoon 18 year old students on a night out in Camden. Why, you may ask, am I joining the youngsters and digressing back to my uni days? Well, I am new to the City, living with my student brother (he doesn't want to be named on this blog so we will call him "Titch") and some of his male student mates. I decided that if you can't beat them, join them, and 6 weeks of being woken by them coming in from nights out made me realise I'm certainly not going to beat them.

That is how, fellow bloggers, I ended up beginning my Friday night playing Russian vodka roulette drinking games in a halls of residence nearby to our house in Camden. The consumption of the vodka led to poor judgement and is how I ended up joining said students on a pub crawl which saw me taking off my shoes in order to keep up with the long limmbed and fast paced kids. They had the advantage of being able to handle more alcohol and having slept all day being well rested for this crawl. I on the other hand, was out of practice of walking bare foot between pubs, and was somewhat lagging behind on this venture.

I can't say the night proved my drinking prowess - more lack thereof. However, I think the kids in my house have a new found respect that I even attempted to keep up, that I did whiskey shooters with the rest of them, and that my challenges in the height and footwear departments did not hold me back.

Saturday night was a different story all together - my friend from home came down to stay. Her family have made millions in business so when I say she came to stay - she did not stay in the student filled house of fun which I call home. No, she stayed nearby in a glamorous hotel in Mayfair. This girl has been one of my best friends since school. She lives a different life to my own but has a heart of gold. A silver spoon but a golden heart.

We had a lovely dinner at the Punch Bowl, in Mayfair, the pub owned by Guy Ritchie, and a favourite in the celeb circle. After dinner there, which was not your typical 'pub' food (I thoroughly recommend taking a visit), we moved on to celeb hot spot Funky Buddha. My friend had been there before. She knows a few famous faces due to her family connections, and does not go to Funky Buddha to see celebrities, rather, she sometimes goes there with them. I on the other hand, was out on celeb safari and I won't mention who I saw (a lady never tells) but as anyone who has been to this club knows, there are a fair few recognisable faces in this place.

The drinks were out of my price range even now - at £350 for a bottle of wine, and £80 for a glass, it was a safe bet I wasn't getting as drunk as the night before. However my night was made in other ways....

The guest list is notoriously hard to get onto at Funky Buddha and we were trying our luck really in getting in, but the bouncer decided he liked the look of us enough to let us in and for free too! In we walked past the velvet ropes without even queuing. If only he had seen me the night before trailing after a bunch of students without any shoes on.

To top off the success of our carefree entry, I woke up this morning and read in the Daily Mail that Strictly judge, and pop star Alesha Dixon was turned away from Funky Buddha this weekend because she and her entourage did not have enough places on the guest list! Yet I made it in! http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1230744/Alesha-Dixon-finds-entourage-Strictly-big-embarks-night-club-hopping.html

Judge me as you will but this has made my weekend ;-) To be honest - and I feel disloyal to my lovely bouncer right now to be saying this - but I had more fun with the students on Friday night than in the rather pretentious and over priced celebrity hangout. But it's fun to try new places! And let's face it, a girl has got to do what a girl has got to do for a night out in a new town! x x

Exciting new project at work!!!

Those of you who read my blog will know I have been working for a short time at a sperm donation website - http://www.pureadam.com/

Yesterday my boss and I were brainstorming and have come up with an exciting new project for the site. It has never been done before in the UK and we are treading new ground.

The venture is going to be big news and have lots of people talking about sperm donation - the more awareness we can create in the public the more donations will be given, and the more people who are desperate for a child will have the opportunity to try sperm donation as an option.

At PureAdam we are dedicated not only to helping make sperm donation less daunting, less expensive, and more accessible, we also know the importance of raising awareness of the issues to make more people willing to donate.

Keep checking my blog - I can't say too much about the new project until we are ready to launch it but subscribers of this blog will be the first to hear!

Ava x

Find out more about my new job

Hey fellow bloggers, hope all of you out there in Cyber Space are well.

All is well with me, I am settling into London and my new job well. I am finding myself thinking more and more about the issues of fertility and having a baby now that I am working for a company helping those wishing to have a baby to connect.

While having a child is a long way off for me I can't help but feel emotionally involved when speaking to those longing for a child. Singles and couples of any sexuality can be consumed with the wish to raise a child and I'm so glad I am working for a worthwhile organisation that brings like minded people together and makes this possible.

The company I work for, http://www.pureadam.com/ has recently gone on facebook so take a look at the page and why not become a fan to find out more about the site.

View PureAdam on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/yco9ho5

www.pureadam.com

As you will know from previous posts, pureadam is the site I am fronting helping those looking to have a child. From gay couples to straight couples and singles, the site connects and forms a community allowing for an easier process of sperm and egg donation.

The high profile owner of this business is something that has received a lot of attention from those who read this blog, and also my friends and family. Confidentiality and the laws surrounding this are clear and I have signed documents ensuring my silence.

Readers of this blog - you are not alone, I have not even told my own family the identity of my employer despite their persistence.

But please keep checking my updates to see how my life in London and new job are going....

http://www.pureadam.com/

Am I the new face of Sperm?

6 weeks since I moved to London I think I may have found what I was looking for - a role interesting enough to justify sticking around in a house full of student boys, and which also allows me to use my creative side and media contacts. I have found a job in PR promoting an area I have never given much thought to before.

I am now the PR person for a sperm donating website bringing together those who wish to have children and donors from around the world. The site acts as an introduction service for people who wish to save time on NHS waiting lists and fees at private expensive clinics.

With the element of embarrassment or anonymity solved by connecting via the Internet, people joining the site have a chance to find like minded people and make their own private arrangements for donation.

The site appeals to many groups, gay couples, single women, couples who have had problems conceiving. There are also a number of people who are looking not only for a donation of sperm, but someone who, whilst not necessarily a partner, wishes to co parent a child they bring in to the world.

Check out the site on http://www.pureadam.com/

I'm finding the whole project hugely exciting and what is even more exciting to my celebrity obsessed mind is who is behind the venture....

Yes I am a girl who reads heat magazine and watches x factor - I don't apologise for it. And that's why I was thrilled to discover on chasing up the anonymous advert and being selected for interview, that the person behind it is in the public eye. With confidently agreements as the top priority during interview, I obviously can't reveal who it is...

My high profile employer is taking the business seriously and although they are involved on a daily basis they have a reputation to maintain and can't let the press know of this venture. That's why they were looking for someone to front the site, be the face of it as it were.

So that's why ladies and gents it now looks as though I could be described the new face of sperm. And as it happens it may be the job I have most enjoyed so far.

http://www.pureadam.com/

Moving to the big smoke

I must be mad.

Having left my job as a PA for a medical director in Birmingham I decided to follow my journalistic routes and move to the Capital in order to search out a more creative and interesting path than shorthand in medical meetings and PowerPoint presentations.

Previous jobs at newspapers and radio stations proved far more enjoyable than the somewhat dull - albeit better paid NHS work I have undertaken for the last year.

With the recession in full flow some might describe my decision as risky (or insane) but I have bitten the bullet and will see what London has to throw at me.

Options for living in London included the rather daunting prospect of finding somewhere affordable I could rent alone - which would undoubtedly be so far out of the city centre I may as well stay in Birmingham.

The other more feasible - but equally daunting option was moving in with my brother, who is living in a house in Camden my parents bought when he moved down to begin uni. They are renting out the other rooms to his friends and as much as I love my brother the prospect of living with a bunch of 18 year old students does not appeal so much to my taste these days.

However, beggars can't be choosers and neither can journalists so it's off to Camden to begin student living all over again - or at least keep my door locked and create a little respite from the madness. A respite where I can update this blog on what's happening in my life, and search out my creative dream job in the media....

Wish me luck!