Dust my broom: chucking the lid, chasing the vinyl

With this one weird old trick ...

Put the dusty needle on the record

... I learnt how to play my records again on a regular basis.

Say, what? Er, I'm trying to say this: that I recently took the unprecedentedly radical step of removing the plastic dust cover lid from my years-old, bog-standard Sony turntable to rediscover the immediacy and pleasure of ... sticking a few records on the platter at regular intervals. Genius! And it only took me about 35 years of owning a turntable to realise that the stupid plastic lid was a hindrance. Yeah, it's true. Playing records is - or should be - a physical pleasure of a kind. Watching them spinning, with an ancient-looking mechanical device (stylus) bobbing around on top is surely all part of the fun. In an age of digitisation and streaming, perhaps more so than ever. And yes, I kind of knew this already but the clunkiness of the lid was, I now think, a barrier - literally and psychologically. I just couldn't be bothered with it. Plus, it has to be said, the "DJ deck" look of an open turntable is simply more appealing (or perhaps it is to would-be DJs like myself). Whatever. I now find myself putting records on the turntable much more often. Perhaps it's lockdown as well ...? True, as I type this I'm listening to a computer file (Glenn Branca) from a CD I've just ripped onto the PC. This is obviously still gonna happen. But now my grandma has taught me this weird old trick I'm also very likely to be spinning my knackered and battered vinyl every day. But er, what about the dust? There are, I now discover, actual comment threads out there with people earnestly comparing notes over how to keep the dust off their uncovered turntables - ideas include: purchasing commercially available silk covers, acquiring a special large-size PVC thing that fits over the entire turntable, even someone in all seriousness saying "put a cardboard box over it every night". Thanks - but no. I'm going for a far simpler idea - just plonking down the sleeve the vinyl came from over the record ...

(Works better with 12"-sized records, admittedly). Anyway, yeah, there'll be dust. But that's what a duster and some polish are for, right? And, as the old blues singers used to say, when you get up in the morning sometimes you've gotta dust your broom ...