In the small hours on the midlands roads, young men in a hurry search out the future on alloy wheels, with no thought of the perils awaiting on the next bend, writes Michael Harding.

I was parked just down from the dog track in my beautiful Pajero when a young fella with a smooth hairless face pulled up beside me in a blazing red jeep. His window opened. He shouted at me: "You'll get a right wallop in the arse there, if you're not careful."

I said, "I beg your pardon?"

He said, "you've no light at the back!" He called my Pajero a "her". "Where did you get her," he asked.

"In a garage," I said.

He said, "she's clean, for a '93." "But," he explained, "you need to go to a man on the Kilbeggan Road. He'll sort ye. He's behind the Centra."

"I'll do that," said I.

And I did.

Mullingar has roundabouts, motorway, by-passes and car parks, all haunted by shadowy packs of young men. Boys in saloon cars with the windows blacked out - bangers dressed up with spoilers and mufflers.

They hunt by night and have no time for the world of safety or speed limits.

They are prisoners of Love and Mythos, and a future that never stretches beyond the next dawn.

But I can't help liking them.

Young Turks. Baloobas. Call them what you want. In some places when the jeeps roll into the car park of a pub, the older clients are heard to whisper - here comes the Taliban!

It was a young lad who fixed my jeep. Opened up the back light unit and exposed a spaghetti bowl of wires to my ignorant eyes and pointed to a yellow one and said, "D'ye see that yellow one?"

I did.

"Well," he said, "that shouldn't be there. That's your fogs. Shouldn't be wired in there at all. Every time you turn on the fog lights you blow the fuse for the tails and dash."

I wanted to be like those young lads cruising through the night with a battery of four beams blinding the eyes of oncoming traffic. He looked at me. Made a quick judgment about age and said, "sure you don't need fog lights, do you?"

"I suppose I don't," I said; there's hardly much need for fog lights at my age.

Then he asked me would I give someone a lift back into Mullingar.

Of course I would.

And so I drove off with a Polish girl in the passenger seat. A thin 20-something in boots, jeans and a cream anorak.

I didn't even know her name and we did not speak. But I liked her white boots. And the white fur around the hood of her jacket.

And when we got as far as the traffic lights at Market House she said, "this is it!" The lights were on red. She kept her eyes to herself, opened the door and floated away across the street.

A shy young woman in white boots and furry anorak, walking the streets of Mullingar on her first few weeks in a strange world. And I thought, we both have a lot of work to do; she needs to learn English, and I need to find the Ireland she is helping build.

That night I walked up to Dominic Street for chips. I asked for a large chip. But instead he gave me two singles because he didn't understand what I said. When I pointed out the mistake he said sorry.

And then he said I could have both bags for the same price.

But a young man offered to purchase the second bag, so in the end nobody lost anything.

On the street outside, the alloy wheels were spinning and the engines purring, as a few young men cruised into the night.

They were probably heading out the Dublin road, toward the Park Hotel, glowing as it does like some Titanic in the dark. Out across the long stretches of flat Tarmac road, along the straight double lanes, all the way to the Toll Plaza.

I suppose they feel nomadic in those sweet hours of the night. They are hunters of love, booze and chips, depending what hour of the night it is. They swarm through the dark and land in the car parks of nightclubs or cinemas with the grace of geese, and just a hint of threat.

Wild geese.

Warriors hunting under a full moon. Believing in some goddess to keep them safe on the road home. To keep them cool when speeding, and taking risks and showing off.

Rubber burning on the tar. And the boys at the wheel, burning with a faith that old men don't have.

mharding@irish-times.ie