Big terraced house, beautiful street, bills incl.

Hello there 🌊

We are Matthew (Irish, British) and Bella (Portuguese, Brazilian, maybe about to be British).

Our search for a place to live went from an intercontinental one to this one specific gem-of-a-street. This has got to be one of the best places to live in the entire world (so we reckon!).

One street over is the best bakery we've ever been to (the Hamblin).

One street on the other side of us is Aston's Eyot – a nature reserve so rich with life – from badgers to bats – and so abounding with beautiful riverside walks, you can hardly believe "it be central Oxford".

The Magdalen Arms and Chester Arms, each within a 1-2 minute walk, are easily the two best gastropubs in Oxford (Bella is campaigning – unsuccessfully – for the latter to do bread & butter pudding year-round). And then Magdalen Road, just next to us, is probably the trendiest road in Oxford these days – with loads of great cafes, shops, restaurants etc.

Meanwhile, the university sports complex is just down the road – with seriously good value access to high-quality facilities for badminton, squash, tennis, hockey, swimming etc.

In general, this collection of streets – "Iffley Fields" – has one of the best communities in all of Oxford. You'll feel it as you walk down the streets, and see how well everyone here knows one another.

Needless to say, we LOVE it here.

Bella and I are a couple. We're interested in many things – climbing, gardening, forró dancing, origami, riddles, baking, stand-up comedy, kites, mazes, ancient history, relativity, dogs etc.

We both work in the climate space.

Bella is also studying a part-time BioDesign masters, and she's also a brilliant seamstress.

Besides my climate work, I'm also writing about AI and complex systems, tutoring, and I do some consulting for tech startups.

But enough of us!

We're looking for one or two lodgers to help us to fill this *excessively vast* house.

We have always liked living with other people, particularly people who are interested in the world.

In our last house, before this move to Oxford, we lived with a cellular biologist-turned-baker and a poet-turned-technologist. They were both fantastic, caring, curious, enthusiastic folks. We miss them so!

Needless to say, we're excited to get to know the people we might be living with next 🦭

We don't mind how old you are, though we'd rather people over 25, just because we reckon there's more likely to be a lifestyle fit.

Ideally, though not essentially, we're looking for people who won't be working from home every day – partly for the rhythm, partly for the available of work space in the house. We're open to discussions around this though.

In general, we think you'll enjoy living with us, and that we'll enjoy it too if...
- You're all the normal things people ask for (respectful, clean, tidy).
- You're sociable, but also very independent (we love hanging out with our housemates, but we also like to work hard on things we care about, and so some weeks we might not get much time to play)
- You don't mind there being a dog in the mix (he's called Akira, and he's very gentle and slow moving these days - he's 13)

Otherwise, we only have two pedantic rules in the house, which it's probably worth saying in advance:
1. No leaving the dish-washing sponge etc. wet / unsqueezed.
2. No leaving bits of food in the sink plughole.

What can we say? We love a wholesomely clean kitchen sink ✨

(And, honestly, we've found from experience that being clear about those two simple rules has set the right kind of expectations for all the other co-living, mutual respect stuff to work out well. So if you're seeing those two rules and thinking "not for me" then no worries – best of luck with your search. If, on the other hand, you're _already_ squeezing out your kitchen sponge in sheer anticipation, then get in touch!)

TTFN,

Matthew & Bella

P. s. All bills are included EXCEPT for the cleaner. We have a brilliant cleaner who comes once every two weeks (about £40pcm pp) – saving all of us the need to depend on one another's cleaning, and keeping the house feeling nice for all of us year-round.