Rachel O’Connor gets into the festival mood early at EquiTruck@The 02 Academy, Cowley Road, on Saturday.

Festival season seems but a faint mirage at this murky time of year.

The thought of lazing about in the sun while watching your favourite band could be almost a lifetime away – eclipsed by the wind, rain and cold of the current winter.

But before you could even consider doing something you might regret, the all-day and all-nighter EquiTruck arrived once again to inject some summer fun into a gloomy January.

The sixth annual event celebrates the fact that Oxford’s illustrious Truck Festival is now ‘only’ six months away and serves as a vibrant reminder of what we can expect from EquiTruck’s big brother this coming July.

With fantastic performances from the likes of Ute, Dreaming Spires, Dead Jerichos and former Supergrass bassist Mick Quinn’s new outfit The dB Band, the event offered music lovers and clubbers alike the experience of a talent-packed mini-festival, but without the mud...and compost toilets.

This WAS a feel-good event with fans enjoying the cream of what Oxford currently has to offer.

The cool kids down at the front were dressed to impress and pogoed their socks off, while the older generations reminisced about when they could still dance the night away (yeah, right!) themselves.

Headliners Fixers – fresh from BBC Radio One’s Live Lounge – performed a strobe-filled high-energy set mixing ’60s Beach Boys harmonies with hard-hitting beats to create a fresh sound that got hands in the air and feet off the ground.

EquiTruck certainly quenched my thirst for festival fun...well, for another six months at least.