Really Simple Captcha wont show image now

getting this error out of the blue:

This contact form contains CAPTCHA fields, but the temporary folder for the files (/pics/wpcf7_captcha) does not exist or is not writable. You can create the folder or change its permission manually.

i cannot have this. its a pro-bono job and there aint no more pro left in my bono.

the only thing i can think that happened is i upgraded my filezilla client recently, and i seem to be noticing all these little small things gone wrong across a lot of my sites.

basically unless i can get some help on this the guy is just gonna get overrun by spambots eventually…