WHITE van man has been driven off the road; logistics man leads the convoy now. Have you noticed? Where once a van might do deliveries and maybe even express deliveries, now the side of every other HGV offers "logistics", global logistics, integrated logistics and even (if the chassis's long enough) global integrated logistics solutions - to which there's probably no answer at all.

Such fast lane nonsense is still overtaken, however, by the ten-ton load bestowed upon our old friend the Rev Jonathan Jennings, 39-year-old Stockton lad and fervent Middlesbrough supporter.

At Peterlee and later at St Cuthbert's in Darlington he was simply the curate; at Auckland Castle he was diocesan communications officer and when in 1995 he joined the high-ups at Church House in London he became broadcasting officer. In media terms, he was a spokesman, and the message was loud and clear.

A report in last Thursday's Times, however - on Nestle's launch of a cranberry flavoured white chocolate bar called Stuff Xmas - reveals that he has been re-branded. Jonathan - "it is not something we would want associated with the Christmas season," he said - has emerged as the Church of England's head of signal logistics. The bloke who gives the green light, perhaps?

Since the head of signal logistics hasn't returned our calls, attempts further to penetrate this etymological maze have proved unsuccessful.

As probably they said in Bethlehem when that big bright star appeared over the horizon, what on earth can it mean?

IF anything can help, the Complete Oxford Dictionary can. Logistics, it says, is from the French for quarter - as in quartermaster - and is defined as "the organisation of supplies, stores, quarters etc. necessary for the support of troop movements, expeditions etc".

The church militant, perhaps?

The trouble with the Complete Oxford - a snip at £1,800 - however, is that once opened it's irresistible.

Thus on the same page we are lured to logophobia, the fear or distrust of words, and, gloriously, to logopandocie - from the Greek logo, meaning word, and pandocie, "the trade of an innkeeper". Translated, therefore, logopandocie means "a readiness to admit words of all kinds".

If ever a single term defined the Gadfly column, it is that one.

JOHN Robinson, another old friend - Timothy Hackworth Junior Mixed and Infants all-comers marbles champion, 1955-58 - is both gentleman of the road and martial arts master.

At Shildon Civic Hall on November 25-26 his attempt on a European record - breaking four piled high house bricks with his bare foot - forms part of a demonstration weekend. In aid of Children with Leukaemia, there's also a huge raffle, prizes donated by Lennox Lewis and Ross Abbott, among many others.

We found him, appropriately, dropping a load of bricks. Nearby was a sign saying "Site operatives vehicle parking" and workers wondering where to put their cars.

Good Shildon lad that he is, John's not into logistics, integrated or otherwise. He drives a lorry, instead.

OUTSIDE a house in Scorton, near Richmond, we spot a pantechnicon owned by the Shore Porters' Society, based in Aberdeen and founded (it says on the van door) in 1498.

"It puts our experience into perspective when you consider that we were established about the same time as Columbus discovered America," says the company's website. "We didn't arrange that move, but we've travelled to 65 different countries since."

The Society is divided into two trading units - the Horse and Van Department (known simply as the Working Department) and the Property and Warehousing Department (known as the Superannuated Members' Fund.) Without once turning logistical; it claims to be "probably the longest established and most experienced removal company in the world".

But has any commercial organisation of any kind been on the road longer? One of the Gadfly Irregulars may care to move things on a little further.

A FINAL word on the Church of England and its own brave new world. Church Times reports the invention of a computer generated organ simulator which by clicking slower or more quickly can keep in tune with the congregation. Its name? - a mouse organ, of course.

LAST Wednesday's column reported on the instantly indictable roast beef dinner served in Yates Wine Lodge in Darlington to a chap from Newton Aycliffe.

The roast potatoes and carrots were still numb from the freezer, the beef sliced as if under micro-surgery, the mash of the rehydratable sort and the Yorkshire pudding wilted like a white rose in winter. He wrote to head office. Tell me the meal wasn't to spec, he pleaded. Unfortunately, they replied - unfortunately, mind - it was.

On Thursday, the Yates Wine Group reported that in the six months to October, profits had dropped by 15 per cent to £6m. Among other reasons, group chairman Peter Dickson cited "ever-increasing customer expectations".

You mean they want half-decent mash and food that's been prepared on the premises? Unfortunately they do.

YATES has introduced a "new" menu, too. Not least because he was quite partial to the old one, Mr H M Stout from Durham has also written to head office. Several favourites had vanished, he protested. Particularly they missed the burgers with various toppings - "replaced by a very standard beefburger served with a rustic bun (a WHAT?) and accompanied by a tub of mustard big enough to cover the average family for over a week". (Interesting word picture, that.)

Submerged by such great expectations, Yates hasn't yet replied. On the same day as its half-yearly report, however, the J D Wetherspoon pub group - in many places a neighbour and close competitor - reported quarterly sales up £26.5m to £110.3m, a 32 per cent rise.

Wetherspoon pubs are all real ale-friendly, ban piped music and television and serve half-decent grub. Perhaps there is hope yet for the great British public house.

...and finally, the column has again been practising its best bedside manner, long serving former Northern Football League secretary Gordon Nicholson very much better on Saturday than he had been when we visited him at Dryburn Hospital in Durham 24 hours earlier.

His many friends will be happy to hear that there are still red rags which rouse the old bull - consultant clinicians would probably call it audio-stimulation and charge £120 an hour - even after two major operations in seven days.

Unable to see him on Friday, we'd bought a newspaper and were astonished. Is the tabloid-sized newsagency at Dryburn the smallest shop in Britain? This logistical logopandocie spreads itself again next week.

Gadfly: www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk/ news/gadfly.html