FORMER editor Jim Worsdale says sorry for a dirty habit.

I wish to offer belated, unreserved apologies to family, friends, colleagues and anyone in whose presence, at home, in the workplace, or elsewhere, I smoked cigarettes or cigars.

It was stupid, unthinking, unkind and unnecessary. So I am sorry. Really, truly sorry.

It has taken me a long time to own up to my failing. About 18 years, actually, come next June.

That’s when I awoke in Southend Hospital’s cardiac care unit, saved and given another chance to enjoy life after a heart attack. A trio of specialists stood alongside my bed and one said: “Up to you, now. Light one more smoke and you’re dead.”

I listened, heeded and eventually got on with this wonderful thing called life.

I have thought little more about my escape, my incredible good fortune and those who cared for, and about, me, until visits this week to an elderly relative in the hospital that saved me.

Each time, rounding a corner and strolling into the grounds, I have passed groups of young women, all puffing cigarettes.

All of them, unbelievably, nurses, dragging on fags before returning to duty. They were standing amid dog ends on the ground as thick as blossom in spring.

I’ve been offended by the choking smoke, the awful smell, the ugliness of the habit. It has reminded me that long ago, I too inflicted this form of degrading and deplorable behaviour on many others too polite to complain or to protest.

q STILL on about some individuals’ disregard for others, I pass on a plea from a cheerful Shoebury shop assistant I bumped into the other day.

“I’ve been planning to write to the Echo,” she said. “But recognising you, I wondered if you might express for me my anger and disgust at the many dog owners who still fail to pick up and clear up their pets’ foul poo from footpaths, especially in Shoebury’s lovely Church Road and St Andrew’s Road.”

I agree with her. We know and appreciate there are many responsible dog lovers who fastidiously poop-scoop. But, as ever, there are some who care not a jot about other people or the environment. They’re more foul than their dogs.

q THERE seems to have been an awful lot of digging up of roads and paths around Southend of late.

I sometimes wonder if holes are reopened to check if an earlier hole is still there. A lengthy stretch of the Queensway underpass, near the town’s mayoral parlour, Porters, has been laid bare and coned-off for ages. Why and for how much longer?

Many, far too many, of the borough’s roads are shamefully neglected and desperately in need of treatment, though. Cracks, potholes, uneven surfaces, bare stretches abound. I suggest that ward councillors drive or stroll around their own necks of the wood to check, to note and to demand urgent improvements.

I bet many will discover lots of roads and streets in need of treatment.

Stop wasting money on “consultants” Southend. Spend where there is a real need among those who pay their council taxes.