A POSTMAN stole a toddler's £10 birthday gift and opened his birthday cards after going "weird for a day or two", York magistrates heard.

Andrew John Alden, 21, took home 92 packets he should have delivered and left 11 others in the sorting office, said Richard Watson, prosecuting for the Royal Mail.

But when staff at Birch Park Sorting Office, Huntington, noticed the undelivered mail there, they called in investigators who found the opened mail and contacted the boy's father, who revealed the child should have received a £10 note and other birthday cards that had gone missing. A search of Alden's home discovered the 92 packets there.

Alden, of Penley's Grove Street, The Groves, pleaded guilty to delaying the delivery of 103 postal packets between February 20 and March 5, stealing £10 in cash from a packet and stealing another postal packet.

Magistrates ordered him to do 100 hours' community punishment and pay £120 costs.

His solicitor, Caroline Aaron, said her client had written a letter of apology to the two-year-old birthday boy and handed a £10 cheque for the boy to the Royal Mail.

She said that Alden had no idea why he opened the mail. "In his own words, he just went weird for a day or two."

He had taken the mail home because he had not been able to sort it quickly enough at the sorting office and planned to deliver it at a later date. It was mostly junk mail, said Miss Aaron.

Alden had had difficulty coping with his parents' divorce and having to abandon his plans to be a teacher. He had been halfway through a sports science degree course at the University of York when he injured his knee and had to change courses.

He took casual work while waiting to start a business management with American studies degree in September, and worked for a month with the Royal Mail.

Updated: 10:57 Friday, May 16, 2003