Southport on your left; Ormskirk down the middle

If you live on north Liverpool and rely on Merseyrail to get you home at night from the city, the chances are you’ll be hearing that a lot over the next six months; if you want to leave the city centre and head north or south using the Northern Line in that time you’ll have to head to Moorfields (pictured above, today).

Head south to Hunts Cross and you probably won’t notice much difference in your daily commute. But if you’re going north - to Ormskirk or Southport - you’ll be herded into lines delineated by barriers to wait your turn, rather like a dinner queue of school kids awaiting their daily gruel.

Liverpool Central - once one the city’s main national terminuses - is closed for renovation until August or October for the loop line and Northern Line respectively. “It’s not you, it’s me,” we were told by the underground railway station as it broke up with us.

We agreed. The station was dirty, scruffy, badly laid-out and thoroughly unloved. A renovation promises ‘natural light’ and extra lift but, for the time being, its loss is a major pain the backside for commuters and may change the dynamic of the city centre’s retail, transport and footfall as we await the new Central Village development (the rest of the city’s underground stations will be renovated over the next few years).

The loss of Central means that many commuters must embark or disembark in the business district, as platform space on the city-centre Northern Line is at a premium - and the narrow spaces at Moorfields aren’t built for the extra capacity.

So it’s Southport on your left; Ormskirk down the middle for the forseeable. We’ve yet to observe other knock-on phenomena - beyond the deliberately slow approaches to Central (its escalators still, eerily, moving as if in uncomprehending of the lack of escalatees) to compensate for not stopping - that Central’s closing has had on the city.

Are you an affected commuter? Is your shop near Central - and has there been a decrease in footfall? Big Issue salesman with a suddenly-quiet patch? Let us know your experiences of Liverpool Central’s closure - and whether Merseyrail have exceeded your expectations, or whether they’re living up to their unfortunate similar-sounding sobriquet.

• A shuttle bus service will operate from Moorfields to Lime Street while the station is closed. There’s another replacement shuttle bus between Brunswick Station to Berry Street during that time.

As an alternative, Merseyrail suggests ‘walking’ - certainly ‘out of the box’. If you still need help head over to the Love Liverpool Central microsite.