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Ed says he was the kind of teenager "in the back of the class messing around," and left school without a plan.

"I wasn't a bad lad," he says, "but just silly and easily influenced."

He did a bit of building work and some junior engineering. But at 17, his life was about to change in an unfathomable way.

Attending an acquaintance's party with his then girlfriend, Ed overheard a guy say, “If she won't go out with me, I will shoot her".

He turned around to see another teenager, called John, with "a shotgun down by the side of his leg".

Ed told John to not be “so bloody stupid" but he aimed the gun squarely at his face.

Then, at point blank range, he fired it. “He shot me… right between the eyes.”

His assailant had taken the shot out of the cartridge, so what actually hit Ed was cork and gunpowder.

Although he survived the blast, the injuries were devastating.

Ed was instantly blinded

“I fell to the ground. Straight away I was blind,” he says.

“I remember thinking, I'm 17. My life has just begun and I'm gonna die... I remember saying, God, please don't let me die, I don't want to die. I was in so much pain.”

“It blew my face to pieces basically: the bone, my nose, my eyes were separating.”

John was on his hands and knees pressing a cloth against Ed’s face, to stem the blood.

He was taken to hospital in an ambulance, with his mother.

Somehow, he remained optimistic. “I was trying to reassure her ’cause I knew that she would have been upset and I just knew I was gonna survive this. I knew it.”

Those first hours in hospital are a blur. “I had a really nice t -shirt and I remember them cutting it off me. And I quite liked this t -shirt,” he jokes.

'Excruciating' pain

The next thing he remembers is waking up in intensive care. “They must have given me some injections for the pain, because it was excruciating.”

“Initially it was very scary,” he admits. “I knew I was totally blind.” But again, his natural optimism helped. "I'm a very positive person, so I didn't dwell on it.”

Gradually, however, the reality of his sight loss began to sink in. He recalls sitting on his bed, trying but failing to flip a two pence piece.

“I was just kind of crying, thinking, I can't see to do this.”

Very soon after, he was registered blind.

Immediately after the incident, Ed had no sight at all. Then gradually, “little flashes” returned.

He confesses to doing some very silly things: “I walked across Worthing multi-storey car park. I went up on the top floor and I stood on the edge.”

There was no barrier to prevent him plummeting. “I think it was a cry for help,” he says.

Friends had rallied round him after the accident, but naturally life carried on.

Ed, however, was left adjusting to a new normal.

He was moved to a rehabilitation centre in Torquay, where he spent his 18th birthday washing pots.

“I was a rebel there,” he recounts. “One of the first things I did was went right up on the roof and walked around. Absolutely crazy… I can see now how stupid it was. But this is proving to yourself, I can do this.”

When the headmaster called him into his office and told him he needed to learn braille, insisting he would never see again, Ed flew into a rage. He refused to accept it.

A new opportunity

Then, an opportunity dropped into his lap. At the time, there were not a lot of jobs for blind people. There was simple engineering, telephony, and there was piano tuning.

The centre had a piano. He could not play it, but he would sit at the instrument most evenings “just tinkling on it.”

It was suggested that he do an assessment to train as a tuner with the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford.

He passed and was offered a place.

Ed could not see out of his right eye at all, and in his left eye he had a big blood clot which led to partial vision.

“It was floating all the time… I’d just get a little glimpse and then it'd be gone.”

Whilst at Hereford, he was visited by a doctor researching various eye conditions.

He told Ed there was a specialist at Moorfields in London, Mr McLeod, who did an operation to remove clots like his – but it was far too dangerous, there was no way he could undertake it.

“No one had ever said that to me before,” Ed recounts. Suddenly there was the possibility that he did not have to be blind forever.

Then, during a trip to the piano museum in London, he just happened to spot large letters on a wall that spelt Moorfields Eye Hospital.

He bundled his way in, and asked at reception if Mr McLeod had a surgery that day. He did.

A big gamble

“I just walked straight in to the consultation room and I got jumped by the nurses.”

Thinking fast, he told them he had been “sent up here especially” by his consultant in Worthing, and within minutes three top guys, including Mr McLeod, had come out to see who he was.

“I said I hope you don't think I'm rude. This is how I've heard your name. This is what's happened to me. Can I make an appointment to see you?”

Mr McLeod looked at Ed that same day. He said there was a risk involved, but if Ed wanted the clot removed, he would do the operation.

Thankfully, Ed's big gamble paid off: "Within four months, I could see again".

“It was incredible,” he recalls. “I remember not seeing the blood clot and looking for it.”

One of the first things he did was learn to drive. “I passed my driving test registered blind.”

But with his sight restored, there were other obstacles to overcome. “The damage to my face, that was the big one… I've had bone grafts and skin grafts and you-name-it grafts.”

Suddenly he could see his own face, and he could also witness other people’s reactions for the first time. “You’re self-conscious about that. It will always be there.”

There are times when he thinks, why me? But it doesn’t last long. “Do you know what? I'm lucky to be here,” says the eternal optimist.

An eternal optimist

There was one particular moment, in the aftermath of the shooting, that helped instil this overriding positivity.

A lady used to visit him in hospital, often lighting a candle.

“I remember one day she came in – and I was aware of someone there, I knew it was her – and she came over and she touched my eyes with her hands.”

He discovered later that she was a devout Catholic, and she had put holy water on his eyes.

“As she walked out the room, I saw her as clear as day... That's when I knew, I'm going to see again.”

It gave him hope.

“I always clung onto that, always, always, always. My glass is always three-quarters full, really.”