meets Sister Mary Joy Langdon
MARY JOY LANGDON is wearing jeans and a thick jumper. It is a cold winter’s day, so why wouldn’t she? After all, she runs Wormwood Scrubs Pony Centre (WSPC) and a vast chunk of her life is spent in the great outdoors (or standing relatively still while coaching children in a cold, cavernous indoor school). However, Mary Joy has a slightly unusual prefix - it isn’t Miss, Mrs or Ms. She is Sister Mary Joy, a member of the Roman Catholic congregation Sisters of the Infant Jesus, but today there is no evidence of a coif secured by a wimple and no tunic covered by a scapular and cowl.
“I don’t look like your typical nun. I’ve never had a habit,” admits the 70-year-old. “I’m just a stable girl. You’ll always see me in jeans or jodhpurs.”
There are other things about Mary Joy that are less than conventional. In the 1970s she joined East Sussex Fire & Rescue, becoming the first female in Britain (and Europe) in peacetime to officially fight fires. That was followed a decade later by
