Why there's a big queue in Manchester city centre for tea with 'half a day's calories' in

Nothing quite captures the fizziness of two 13-year-olds on their way to fill their boots with bubble tea. Or boba tea, if you’re being authentic. Or just boba, if you’re being super authentic and cool about it, which, of course, these two are.

Sylvie, my daughter Joy’s mate, says she has dreamed of this day, as it’s been in the diary for a week or so, and I don’t doubt it. They’ve already made a list of what they want to try in a notebook and it reads like a novel. English teachers take note; if you require volume, set an assignment on boba tea and put your feet up.

On this alternative Christmas morning (that’s the level of excitement we’re talking about here) we’re off to Ohayo Tea on the Princess Street edge of Chinatown, which, when we visited a couple of Saturdays ago, had a queue snaking up around the corner towards the famous Chinatown arch, and no one in it was batting an eyelid about a 25 minute wait.

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This is the spot if boba is your thing. The north star. The centre of the universe.

These two are fixated. If they’re not drinking it, they’re talking about drinking it. If they’re not talking about drinking it, they’re watching other people either drinking it or making it on TikTok.

If they’re not watching other people drinking it or making it on TikTok, they’re squirrelling pocket money away to buy the gear to make it themselves from the Chinese supermarket.

For the uninitiated, firstly where in hell have you been? Secondly, boba tea is a Taiwanese invention,