An eccentric whiskey collector...

I'm looking to buy a house in the near future (first time buyer) and yesterday after work we went to look round what looked like a promising house. We were greated at the door by a fairly short man, mid-fifties with wild straw coloured hair and a slightly disheveled appearance. His hair in fact was not dis-similar in colour and style from Dr Emmett Brown in the Back to the Future films. This man didn't have the same wild look in his eyes, but he did have a manically energetic air about him which was obvious from the wild gesticulating he did with his arms all the time. The faint smell of cigarette smoke emanated from him. The house was untidy to say the least, with piles of junk everywhere, a lifetime of belongings scattered all around. On the walls were cabinets filled with miniature whiskey bottles, some many years old and others from distilleries long since closed down. The man, lets call him Mr Bell, explained that he "wasn't a drinker" but just liked collecting them. It started accidentally when someone bought him some miniature whiskey bottles for his birthday, and on subsequent birthdays others followed suit. His job, installing and repairing cash machines, used to take him all round the country and he often would have several hours to kill in a strange town. He'd wander round the shops, and gradually started buying miniatures wherever he went. One day, so he told us, he'd like to travel round Scotland visiting all the distilleries.

In the course of showing us round the house, we found out he was just in the process of getting a divorce - I'm not sure what number wife this was, but it clearly wasn't his first. The kitchen, with its rows of bottles on top of the cupboard, many of them alcoholic, cast some doubt on his assertion that he was "not a drinker" but then maybe they belonged to his soon to be ex-wife. Mr Bell was obviously a DIY man, as the signs of his handiwork were everywhere, much of it unfinished. The only rooms which were fully decorated were a computer room (with a desktop, a laptop and various other computer equipment), and the attic room. The attic was reachable only by a rickety and unsecured ladder, but the room itself was nicely carpeted and decorated, with what looked like a serious collection of music kit. There were speakers, amplifiers, mixing stations and a lot of kit I simply didn't recognise. A man of many hobbies, that much was obvious.

So that was the story of Mr Bell (obviously not his real name). An interesting person, potentially the basis for a fictional character. Lets hope I meet someone else interesting soon.