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In September 1666 Pepys watched London burn from a boat on the Thames. He saw pigeons that would not leave their windows fall with scorched wings, and he carried word to Whitehall, where the King ordered houses pulled down to make firebreaks after the Lord Mayor had failed to act. As the fire neared his office, he and Sir William Penn dug a pit in the garden and buried their wine and a parmesan cheese to save them.
In June 1665 Pepys saw his first houses in Drury Lane marked with red crosses and 'Lord have mercy upon us', and he bought tobacco to chew against the smell. He stayed at his naval post while the weekly bills of mortality climbed into the thousands. On 31 December he wrote that he had never lived so merrily, or earned so much, as during 'this plague time', since his fortune had risen several-fold.
A daily record gives mass death, fire, dinners, new clothes, quarrels with a wife and office gossip the same flat weight. This shows that people living through a catastrophe do not experience it as a separate event. They fit it in among ordinary appetites and errands, and those errands keep going throughout.