Happy birthday Birthday to UK Birmingham Cypriot Artermisia Pili who celebrated her 100th birthday Monday 19 February 2018 with friends, relatives, and The Lord Mayor of Birmingham.

Artermisia Pili was born in February 1918 in Trachypedoula Village Paphos into the Jordanou Family.  Her mother died in childbirth to her sixth child and being the eldest, Mother had to leave school at an early age to work and help support the family.

This part of Cyprus was rural and with hardly any opportunities especially for a girl without completed education, Artemisia  decided to come to England in 1938 and shared the sea journey with a girlfriend from Ktima who was a photographer.  She then found work with a family of doctors who had houses in London and Bournemouth. She stayed with this family until being introduced to and then married, Louis Pili in 1941. Louis came to England in 1935. and originated from Kato Drys, Larnaca.  Artemisia then worked in a clothes factory making military uniforms until the family came to Birmingham in the spring of 1943 to buy and work in a fish and chip shop weeks after Michael was born.  Her husband had a cousin already in the trade nearby.  At that time, only about six Greek Cypriot Families lived in this part of the Midlands.

The family made what must have been an emotional return to Cyprus by ship in 1947 with Father and three children and spent eight weeks touring the whole of Cyprus only nine years after coming to England.  Shortly afterwards, Artemisia helped all her siblings in turn come to England.  Due to problems in Cyprus during the mid fifties and family issues, she did not go back to Cyprus until the mid 60’s.

Artemisia brought up five children, one boy and four girls and still worked very hard in the fish and chips shop they had at different sites in Birmingham.  Life then was difficult, more so for the housewife without all the mod cons of today.  Besides basic living conditions, shop work was also very basic, coal fired wall ranges, no extraction, having to skin and bone the fish and cut the chips with a hand chipper. The family then acquired one of the first “flat bed” electric chippers but whilst cleaning the machine, Artemisia sliced off the top of thumb.

Even after she left her last shop in Lozells, Artemisia continued to work either helping in her son’s shop in Erdington then Sutton Coldfield, working with relatives and even become a School Crossing Warden at the local school.  She loved to travel and besides trips to Cyprus, travelled around America, Greece and went to the Holy Land one Easter and became a Hadjina.

Artemisia continued her trips right up till 2006, age 88.  Since then she has suffered a broken hip, usual age problems and mostly boredom since moving to a Residential Home then into a Nursing Home in 2013.  When possible, she enjoys being taken out but needs a wheelchair for mobility.

Sadly, her husband and all her siblings have died.  Artemisia has many Grand and Great Grand Children in the UK and America.

Parikiaki Newspaer wishes her happy birthday and many happy returns.