It has been a tricky few months as I've wrestled with the realities of bringing a musical about curry and Indian restaurants to life...

Happily there is light at the end of the tunnel as many scenes, songs and characters from Half 'n' Half are now starting to take shape. I do love the way that a character moves from being a name on the screen to taking on its own life. My aim is always to have characters that are so real in my mind that I feel that I could sit down and talk to them. You start to get to know what they might say and do in any given situation - obviously this comes in handy when you're writing the scenes!

One of the big issues for me has been deciding what era to set the musical in. I think I alway knew it would take place in an Indian Restaurant in Cardiff.  Originally I was thinking that the first act might be in the late sixties and moving forward to the present day in the second act. However, as the story has developed I have found myself drawn to set the whole thing in the mid eighties. I've been justifying this on the grounds that there was a lot going on in Britain. Certainly it was a big time of change for Indian restaurants with the start of the Balti Boom.  Perhaps for the first time, Curry Houses started to be a place to visit for the food and not just somewhere to go once the pubs had shut.  It's also an era in which I started to go to Indian restaurants for the first time. I have many memories - both good and bad - of these visits.

Although much of my research is done and I'm well into the writing phase, I'd still love to hear from people with anecdotes and memories of visits to an Indian Restaurant up until the eighties. Here are a few questions:

What was your favourite restaurant?

What was it called?

How was it different from the Indian restaurants of today?

What stories, situations or anecdotes stick in you mind?

For example, chatting to my father recently; he recalls that his favourite Indian restaurant in Birmingham in the sixties used to have a queue of people around the block waiting to get in on Saturday nights. He also recalls a man on the next table instructing him on the correct way to eat curry. Apparently it was important to mix the sauce on your plate with the rice. This would have been fine had he not then leant across and used his finger to mix up the food on my father's plate as a demonstration!

So don't be shy. Please feel free to 'comment' on this blog and share your memories. I look forward to hearing from you.

Tim Riley

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