It's 1973. There are five of us. We all live in Ayrshire (Ayr, Maybole, Crosshill, Dunure, Barassie) and we all sing in The Arran Choir which means we meet up at least once a week. And we even have names. We are: Susan Sharman, Alice Findlay, Ian White, Jim Roy and Dave McClure. We often play and sing together casually, sometimes with other friends from the choir, but the idea of forming a band doesn't happen immediately. It takes a holiday in Denmark and a clockwork mouse called Eustace to provide a focus. Somehow, we coalesce, appropriate the mouse's name and return home a confirmed band, lacking only a place to play.
Ayr Burns Monument Hotel books us to play 2 or 3 evenings a week for the summer of 1973. We are entirely acoustic. All of us sing. Ian plays an Eko Ranger acoustic and Dave a Taurus classic and sometimes flute. Jim adds penny whistle to the mix and Alice has a tupperware box of lentils for rhythm.
We don't all play every night. Any three of us* can hold the fort for a full set.
We try our hand at busking at the Edinburgh Festival and by a fluke land a spot in the Festival Club. A band has failed to turn up and we are looking to get out of the rain.
In August 1974, we record a session for Glasgow University Student Television service. 50 years later, the video no longer exists but the audio is recoverable and Don F McLean manages to remaster our 20th Century efforts into something very presentable.
So - welcome to Eustace. (No reunion concert is planned!)
Eustace dissolved naturally, soon after this recording. We all had to enter the wider world of work!
*Any three of us - not strictly true. Susan, Alice and Jim would have needed a guitarist!