Example sentences of "[pers pn] had been [art] [adj] [noun sg] " in BNC.

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1 With regard to point ( c ) , I had been a teensy bit lazy in the last few maths lessons , not having worked on the set tasks with much enthusiasm at all .
2 I knew later I had been a damn fool but …
3 Was this the point at which to say that I had been a professional actress for over thirty years and was well aware of the mechanics etc ?
4 Although Fair Isle is officially part of Shetland , and I had been a keen birdwatcher since I was a boy , I had never had the opportunity to visit the island until I had started to work for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds .
5 She told us : ‘ The first time I saw this lady from the Foundation for Global Unity in Canterbury , she told me I had been a young boy in one of the Balkan countries , where slaves were being used to cut down all the trees .
6 In the middle of many clashes and difficulties were the men whom I had met , and to whom , if I had been a true friend , I might have given something of the faith and spirit which could have helped them find a better way for their people .
7 I had been a dutiful daughter , an elegant accessory , a nurse and business manager in the service of three men .
8 I have sometimes gone into it when the King was absent from Delhi and once pretty far I thought , for the purpose of giving my advice in the case of a great lady so ill that she could not be moved to the outward gate ; but a Kachemire shawl covered my head , hanging like a large scarfe down to my feet , and a eunuch led me by the hand , as if I had been a blind man .
9 By the time I left his office , I felt as if I had been an established outside-left for years , ’ Bastin later recalled .
10 ‘ I had never been interviewed before but felt really at ease , mainly because I discovered I had been an informal link worker all my life !
11 ’ So this particular sergeant who had been a PC when I had been an acting sergeant , sat alongside me .
12 My personal life had been a disaster : I had had a lousy relationship with my mother ; been frightened of my father ; from time to time my marriage had been close to the rocks and I had been an uncaring father .
13 I had been the first Chairman of Wells-Next-The-Sea , Town Council , but two or three years afterwards , we decided to turn , er , the old cinema , they wanted to turn the old cinema into a Dance Hall .
14 I began there as someone who was already a professor , I had been the first woman Pro-Vice-Chancellor in the country .
15 She had been a regular person once , but that had been before the voices started up in her head , before the dead woman got out of her rocking chair , before the preacherman reached into her mind and gave it a sharp twist …
16 In any case , even if she had been a skilled charmer it was not possible to allure somebody who slashed back at you like a master swordsman and drove the point in .
17 If she had been a religious person she would have put it down to retribution for her sins , but she had lost whatever faith she had had in her years as the Madam of Dublin 's most fashionable brothel .
18 She had been a battered baby , grew up in a succession of foster homes , and then married a man who regularly beat her up .
19 He held her against him , nursing her as though she had been a small child , while looking down into her face .
20 ‘ Gross exaggeration , ’ Fabia laughed , but could n't deny that she had been a great fan of the Czech composers , and still was .
21 She had been a lifelong friend of the Abrams , ’ Mr Burke said .
22 When she had been a tiny child , and Fenna had still been a small , manageable and undemanding dragon she had , often spoken of him , to her mother who had grinned , to her grandmother who had smiled , and to her schoolteachers and friends , who had laughed indulgently .
23 Her senior by fourteen years , she had been a splendid nursemaid and even after marriage , while rearing her own family , Edna had still managed to do part-time cleaning and a weekly wash in the Tremayne household .
24 Personally , I think it was a merciful release both for my aunt and for my Uncle Félix , seeing that she had been a helpless invalid for so long .
25 Just as she had been a conscientious dancer , she now became an equally conscientious needlewoman .
26 Still , she thought , bracing her shoulders , if she had been a real mother she would have had to endure many such problems with a teenage daughter .
27 She had been a major influence in my life , and helped me through the rough patches .
28 A case of gamekeeper turned poacher , given that she had been a fast-stream entrant to the Treasury , much of whose function it is to resist that sort of demand . ’
29 She had been a loyal colleague for many years , respected by parents and children alike , and since the accident had proved a trusted friend and companion .
30 She had been a clerk-receptionist phone-answerer-teamaker and she had got the job through her uncle Bob who was as near to being a friend of Thomas Walby 's as it was possible to be .
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