For me, safety footwear does not drum up the fondest recollections.  Take, for example, my first pair of steel toe capped boots; bought by my mother in readiness for a tractor driving course from a sale for the princely sum of five pounds! There was good reason they only cost a fiver.  Even discounting the cheap, pitted leather, there was the enormous weight and discomfort to contend with.  Then there were the jibes from the rest of my class when one of the laces snapped and I had to use a piece of orange bailing twine to fasten it. Those boots spent the rest of their life in the boot of my Clio until finally being consigned to the bonfire.