About

I actually stayed at the other pub, but didn't take a picture.

Concerning the Inn:

The Rose and Phoenix Inn is a public house from the English mythopoeic tradition. This means that courtesy, conversation, and good humour are taken seriously, and that the conversations range widely, from the fine art of high adventure through the making of Cherries Jubilee; what Douglas Adams so famously summed up as the grand question of life, the universe, and everything.

In the Victoria and Albert

Concerning the Innkeeper:

My name is Victoria Goddard. I am a writer, gardener, and jobbing humanist. In 2013 I finished three years of teaching at the University of King’s Colege in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and decided that it seemed a most propitious time to put all my belongings in storage and go walk across England, to write, to learn about smallholdings, traditional crafts and cooking, and enrich my storehouse of experience in one fell swoop. I made it across by the end of November, had a curious couple of months in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, and am currently back in Halifax acting as the sexton of St George’s Round Church and moving forward with the writing and gardening portions of the equation. You can find more about my fiction (and, who knows, maybe even join my new releases mailing list!) over on my author site.

Photographs are my own unless otherwise noted.

9 thoughts on “About”

  3. Love your blog Victoria. You are welcome to borrow Ron’s sextant (a birthday present from yours truly.) And I’m not bitter that I should be working on my list of sixty things to before I turn sixty.

    Jane

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  4. Aha, someone to ask if I can’t figure out mine! The sextant was a graduation gift this November, so I’m excited to learn how to use it. I imagine Ron has more opportunity than I to use his on board a ship, but I’ll get there one day. The metaphorical wayfinding — as the gift-giver pointed out — is very much the theme of this year for me. Welcome to the blog, Jane — I’m glad you’re enjoying it.

    Upping the ante to follow each year might make it difficult. I think the trick is to put on things you really want to do!

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  7. Would love to follow your blog – I am for some unknown reason being followed by the words and Signs relating to Phoenix and Roses! I was looking up their meanings online and your Blog came up!!!

    If you can tell me the reason for the name behind the Rose and Phoenix Inn – I would be so grateful!! It would help add “meaning” for these 2 words that seem to crop up in my daily life – I think they are very Spiritual!! ;0) xx

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  8. First of all, welcome, Sacha! I’m pleased you found my blog, and hopefully you’ll enjoy sticking around.

    I too find roses and phoenixes very evocative images. I’ve always been fascinated with the layers of symbolism around certain things, and (given my studies in medieval literature) I’ve particularly liked the resonances around these two. The phoenix is a symbol of rebirth, of course, but also of resurrection, of creation and re-creation, of destruction being made into something good. Plus I find the image of a bird of fire splendid.

    As for roses … I just like gardening and I’ve always liked roses, particularly the old-fashioned and wild forms (not so much tea roses, which I think are often very ugly plants). Roses have so much meaning, too–love of various sorts, and the paradoxes of thorns and beauty, sensuality and purity, images both of carnal and celestial love and desire. I like stories of the White Rose of Dante’s Paradise, or ‘The Nightingale and the Rose’ by Oscar Wilde, or the medieval ‘Romance of the Rose’ (which is not a favourite poem of mine, but still a fascinating text).

    I’ve also always liked the pubs named ‘The Rose and Crown’, so when I wanted to name a particularly special inn for my stories, I came up with ‘The Rose and Phoenix Inn’, and decided to use it for the name of my blog as well.

    I make use of a lot of the imagery in my stories, particularly my first novel (Till Human Voices Wake Us, which has an actual phoenix in it); the inn has not yet made it into a published story, but will fairly soon.

    So there you have it!

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