like people, only stupider

A few nights ago I woke up at some point in the middle of the night (presumably because one of my imbecile neighbours had decided to make some form of noise) but delayed attempting to get back to sleep as I thought I could smell a faint smell of something possibly burning. I got up and wandered about the flat for a bit, snout-testing plugs and appliances for evidence of smell-source and finding nothing. All the windows were closed but the smell was slightly stronger in the slight draught coming through the front door, though still too weak to be anything particularly close. Another quick check confirmed that the building wasn't visibly burning so I stopped poking and tried to get back to sleep. Although I didn't wander past them for another day or so (when it was too dark to effectively blip them) the source of the smell was almost certainly one of the three bins showing evidence of having been recently set aflame, a reasonably depressingly popular occurrence on this stretch of street behind the charity shops and Kilimanjaro on Nicolson Street. It is assumed that the people setting fire to the bins are not the same people who can be seen rummaging through them for stuff the charity shops have thrown out, nor the subset of these people who examine the bins' contents by strewing them all over the pavement and road instead of just looking down into the bin (or, in some cases, standing inside it).