Right now is the worst time of year to ride in London without eyewear, and not just because the weather is bright and sunny. A far more irksome and markedly less visible problem – is bright sunshine a cycling problem? – is filling the air as the Capital’s Plane trees shed the short hairs on their young leaves and seed balls.

These hairs are a powerful irritant and make the tree, Platanus × hispanica, perhaps less ideal as a city tree than it might be. They may not trouble the non-asthmatic pedestrian much, but they sure can make life miserable when cycling.

The pain inflicted by a hair in the eye is sharp, intense and unlike that of, say, a small fly and does not respond well to rubbing. The only effective answer is to sport a pair of shades, which is no bad thing in any case. Of course, wearing eye protection is the norm amongst today’s cyclists but, back, in the ’70s and early ’80s, few professional racers bothered. Odd, this, since Aviator-style shades were popular in the ’60s and full-on goggles before that, when roads were often still unmetalled and dust and eye irritation a real problem.

Only when, sometime in the mid-80’s, an epidemic of conjunctivitis spread through the peloton during the Tour de France did pro’s begin again to take seriously the idea of protecting the eyes, initially with enormous lenses by Bolle and others and then, as aesthetic sensibilities got a grip, by Oakley, Briko and the rest.

Even wearing decent eyewear, it is, as I found this morning, possible to catch a hair in the eye as it gets blown around the lens by airflow. What better reminder of the advisability of wearing shades?