PADIHAM caretaker Carl Patrick Bleasdale was driving with less than total care when police pulled him over in Heywood, magistrates heard.

Bleasdale, 54, of Garden Street, Padiham, had been weaving from side-to-side and travelling at an unusually slow speed which caught the officers' attention and when he was tested he was found to have more than half as much against the legal limit of alcohol in his system.

Bleasdale, who appeared at Rochdale magistrates court, admitted drink driving in Bury Old Road, Heywood, was fined £100 with £35 court costs and banned from driving for 12 months. Offered the chance to reduce the term of disqualification by a quarter through a drink drivers' rehabilitation programme, Bleasdale told the magistrates: "I might as well. I've lost my job and I've nothing else to do." He added that he had been a caretaker and cleaner-in-charge in Padiham for the past four years and held a clean driving licence. He gave no reason for his drink driving other than to comment: "I'm just guilty."

A breath test showed him to have 62 microgrammes of alcohol in 100 millilitres of breath compared with the legal limit of 35 in 100.