If you want to observe what a dusk-till-dawn curfew looks like, visit Lennoxtown towards the end of next month. For five days, when darkness falls, nothing will get in or out of this bustling old village that lies at the foot of the Campsie Hills.

The town’s Main Street is to be resurfaced and so East Dunbartonshire Council has decided that, between the hours of 7pm and 6am, Lennoxtown must effectively be shut down. It means that nurses in the town’s care homes face long detours down narrow country B-roads as winter descends.

Shop assistants on the late shift at the local Co-op who live on the wrong side of town face an even longer roundabout journey. Lennoxtown’s only bus service linking it to Glasgow and surrounding towns and villages will cease completely in the evening during this lockdown.

Local people only discovered the latest disruption via information cards carrying a QR code which have begun appearing in their shops and businesses. There is a drawing of an earth-moving digger and a smiley man wearing a hard hat and then this: “Thank you for your patience as we deliver these transformative works for Lennoxtown.”

If the village was to design a new coat of arms, it would probably have to feature a JCB and a hard hat. Like the diggers, the word “transformative” is doing a lot of heavy lifting. Such has been the year-long disruption to its Main Street that the locals’ reserves of patience are now running on empty.

Temporary traffic lights and road improvements and repairs have become an inescapable feature of travel across Scotland in recent year (Image: Colin Mearns)

Since the beginning of last November, the only main access road to and from Lennoxtown has become a no-go area. Traffic is at a standstill, with massive tailbacks snaking back through the spine of the village. The invisible damage wrought by emissions from dozens of stationary cars on a street lined with houses, shops and schoolchildren may not become clear for a while yet.

Of much more immediate and obvious concern is the economic apocalypse that now threatens the few remaining businesses on a street which once thrummed with commerce and industry.

Janet Watt, who owns Cafe JJs, said: “It would be fine if we could see demonstrable improvement after almost a year of disruption, but beautifying some pavements and installing some fancy planters isn’t going to cut it. I’m already down 50%–70% in profits for this year. That’s unsustainable in a small community like this.

“What makes it worse is that communication from the council has been patchy at best, so that you’re having........

© Herald Scotland