Sir,

Saturday, May 17, saw a fantastic, day and almost- night-long Spiritual Connexions event at the De Valence and here I go again on one of my pet hobbyhorses, the use of Tenby's Arts and Entertainment venue and its potential if given more support by the local community.

The vision and brainchild of one Pembrokeshire woman, Rosemary 'Rose' Griffiths, of the Preseli School of Healing, this mind/body/spirit event proved that the De Valence can be a fantastic venue in Tenby and another great asset in our armoury of tourist attractions - thereby generating more income for the local economy.

As soon as I learned that Spiritual Connexions was being organised by Rose, I knew it would be a great event, as I attended her Spiritual Fayre at Withybush Showground two years ago. Rose and her Preseli School of Healing team aren't 'on the make' financially, as some members of the public seem to sometimes suspect that people working in this field can be: indeed, in my experience, she not infrequently offers free complementary therapy sessions to different sectors in the Pembrokeshire community

A number of different healers - from complementary therapists to psychic mediums - were offering their services to the public during the daytime on Saturday at the De Valence... some of these services were free of charge, some required the payment of a fee. Workshops and talks were free and all of the professionals offering healing were prepared to discuss, in depth, the services they had to offer, whether they were fee charging or not... without any required commitment from the potential client.

Both during the day and night, my impression was that the majority of healers present were entirely genuine... not least because the event was raising funds for Missing Persons Wales, a charity whose name makes its remit self-evident... Tenby Observer readers may be surprised to learn that 150 people disappear every week of the year in Wales, small nation that we are. So Missing Persons Wales is a very worthy cause for Spiritual Connexions to be supporting last Saturday.

When I spoke to Rose during the daytime, she was disappointed by the poor turnout for the event, but in the evening, what a difference . . . people had come from all over Wales and beyond (other parts of the UK, Australia and America . . . the latter represented by the presence of Native American healers and musicians in their traditional, colourful regalia)... dressed to the nines. I have never seen so many glamorous evening gowns at a local event and the men, too, looked wonderful in black dress and bow ties. The glitterati of the mind/ body/spirit world had hit the De Valence for the first regional Spiritual Connexions Awards event (outside England). The awards, founded by Richard Blair (who was present on Saturday) three years ago, are inaugurated to recognise achievement in this field, as there are awards in so many other fields: If you like, they were a sort of BAFTAs of the Spiritual World and this analogy captures the ambience of the evening.

The auditorium was totally transformed, as I have never seen it before, just to prove what can be done with the De Valence when a huge effort is made. Yet, I only saw two familiar, local faces - Ann Love and her daughter, proprietor of Tenby's Ecco Trust, who won the well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award for 30 years of pioneering work in Pembrokeshire in the field of healing. What so many Tenbyites missed, even if they aren't into mind/ body/spirit, the musical entertainment slots in between the awards were superb, including one of Wales' top female harpists, playing amongst other melodies, Andrew Lloyd Webber's 'Music of The Night', and a Native American flute player with a haunting tribute to our ancestors' voices on the wind.

Rose Griffiths and her 'right-hand woman' and best friend Sue have proved, with last Saturday's event, that the De Valence is both capable of and worthy of being a venue for events of national significance. With enough motivation and imaginative flair, the De Valence could become a real money spinner for our community, which is not to criticise the local committee running the venue; they do their level best to cater for all tastes, as I have stated before, but lack the support of the locals they are aiming to please.

Anne-Ruth Alton,

3 Islay Court, Victoria Street, Tenby.