Example sentences of "[vb past] been a [adj] [noun pl] " in BNC.

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1 She 'd even felt the odd pang of nostalgia for the old days when she 'd been a young wet-behind-the-ears singer , just beginning to make her way up the ladder .
2 When we were there Stan was with us and he 'd been a few times to Brussels to with the Labour Party and , and he said oh it 's great !
3 I suppose if I 'd been a few years older , I would have replied , ‘ Is n't that the only way to treat it ? ’
4 Churchill had been a hundred miles from London , weekending in the country .
5 What , then , of life and death in a typical Victorian family , compared with the way things had been a hundred years previously ?
6 It had been a nine days ' wonder , during which no charges had been brought , but Travis had told her to her face that he knew she had taken it .
7 Coffin wondered if the inhabitants of Drake Towers , with their BMWs and Porsches , knew that the old Francis Drake Street had been a regular thieves ' kitchen .
8 So many exceptions had been made to earlier Navigation Acts by royal licence that it had sometimes looked as if they were intended to raise revenue rather than to direct trade , and in the 1660s there had been a few signs that the legislation which Charles had inherited from the Republic and had then extended might still be treated in the same way .
9 There had been a few times , with my accent , I 'd been called names , but as soon as they knew I was Jewish I had a hundred mothers and brothers and fathers to take care of me .
10 All she had been told when she came round after the anaesthetic was that there had been a few complications and the operation had taken rather longer than had been expected .
11 And there had been a few lines from Ellen , proving that Oreste so far from being carried to heaven by an angel was firmly rooted in East Retford and had grown another two inches .
12 Parish clerk Jennie Flintoff said there had been a few accidents at the entrance to the village .
13 It had been a few months before Roy realised he had married what his mother would have called ‘ a lazy bitch ’ .
14 For , he was sure , no mistake , there had been a few flings in her life .
15 It had been a few years since he had served Mass last as an altar-boy in Rosstrevor , and even the new authority of his police sergeant 's stripes did little to compensate for his nervousness at being on the altar again .
16 He was a real old country doctor , of a type that is fast dying out , and she knew that if she had been a few years younger he would have patted her on the cheek .
17 She 'd had it for seven years , and it had been a few years old when she and Tony had bought it .
18 It had been a few years since I 'd ridden a bike but it 's like sex , providing you do n't fall off , you soon get back into the swing of it .
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