There's the gentlest of warm breezes ruffling the latest in the long line of parasols that meet their end here in the unpredictable spins of the wind.

It shades my Mac and allows me to sit outside and write in September temperatures that have pushed 30C in the last few weeks.

If I reach out and pinch the lavender, a burst of fragrance clouds briefly around me. I have come late to liking the smell, once dismissing it as reminiscent of old ladies and faded skin patted with its cloying perfume.

Huge white butterflies dart around the still colourful gardens although many of their kind have obviously had their day.

There are still a handful of figs left on the tree in front of me. The rest have gone to the frelons, the hornets who get drunk from their twilight feasting on their favourite fruit. Their bombed-out weaving amuses me and I leave them alone to enjoy the night. I'm not that fond of figs anyway. So long as the frelons don't bother me, I don't bother them.

The table on which I write has long lost its teak splendour through my neglect and being exposed to all weathers. Now grey and populated by green lichen - a proof of our non-polluted air - it just is what it is, nothing more.

The tiny willow tree, planted when it stood just 3ft high, now already stretches beyond 8ft. Drooping beautifully, its fronds are strengthening to provide future shade in years to come.

Today the view delights me in a quiet, calming way. It has not always been thus, as you know all too well from my outpourings here.

Behind me Las Molieres sits, as indifferent as ever, yet walk inside and there is a lighter, somehow brighter mood.

Perhaps it's because I've finally awakened to Roslyn's (the cleaner who can't clean) forte. She is a destroyer of worlds, a one-woman commando raid when pointed at a room and told to clear it. In this case, the kitchen, a place of which I have no real understanding beyond the workings of the microwave and the gas hob for lighting my fags when the lighter runs out.

By the time she had finished there were five black bin bags of out-of-date foodstuffs. Nothing fresh, of course, just packets of soup, unused herbs and spices, tin after tin of tomatoes (why?) and jars of sauces I never opened. Virtually all dated from three years ago, a time I now realise when the page turned once again and I allowed myself to go downwards rather than upwards.

For many months, even longer, my niggling despair, discontent and unhappiness have often, though sometimes unwittingly, flavoured this column. Anyone accessing the browser history on my computer would see a symptom-obsessed checker of numerous terminal diseases, usually liver or lung fixated.

Convinced my days were numbered I simply closed off, too certain of the outcome to visit a doctor and hear the words spoken out loud. Eventually I became the existentialist I believed I was at 13. All was meaningless. All too much trouble. For what?

More often than not I went to bed undernourished, over-fagged and over-wined. It has taken a punishing week in hospital, unrelated to all my morbid fantasies, to give me clear sight. It has taken numerous scans and X-rays to show that I am in pretty good shape.

Comprehending that I might actually carry on for another few years, I have decided to give this old body the respect it deserves. The daily wine has gone without a backward glance. I eat three times a day and drink copious amounts of water. The fags are not yet under control but they are the only vice I'm battling.

In mitigation for my neglect I turn back to the discarded foodstuffs. The dates confirmed for me that all unravelled after the foot and knee breaks and weeks of wheelchair dependency followed by months of destroyed confidence in the ability of those legs to take me anywhere.

I had never been ill before, never been dependent, and my mortality hit me with shocking, profound awfulness. The following year Portia was brought down low by the hit-and-run and again months of nursing and worry followed, to be replaced this year by her slow decline until the inevitable. It hit me hard, and still does at times even three months on.

Needing a reason for my black introspection I focused on France and the utter stupidity of living in a house in the middle of a field in La France Profonde. Yet I couldn't come up with anything better - no positive plan B; no enthusiasm for the change I was convinced had to be made to turn me back to me.

It took hospital to click my switch back on, to shake myself out of inertia and be truly, truly grateful for all I have when so many haven't a fraction of what I possess. Frankly, I'm ashamed of myself. So let's start on the new page and see where we go from here. It won't be all sweetness and light - how dull would that be?

Meanwhile, it's time for me to see a man about a dog.