Example sentences of "i could [verb] [was/were] [verb] " in BNC.

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1 All I could manage was to haunt Rocamar like a beast with no heart . ’
2 If I did n't want it he would say that he was keeping me and the least I could do was give him sex .
3 If I was to spend race day reporting as a spectator , then the least I could do was arrive early and attempt the course myself .
4 But all I could do was remind people of John 's situation .
5 Look , at the most all I could do was bring whoever did it to trial . ’
6 But — ’ she said , her voice suddenly bitter , ‘ I 'm not in a position to talk , since all I could do was run — eh ?
7 All I could do was to mumble that I regretted not taking my degree , and , though I could see it was irritating of me to whine , to feel stale and bored was not such a trivial thing ; that though we might have the vote now , meals still had to be prepared and children looked after and since this kind of drudgery was despised by society as not being ‘ real work ’ , we were in the hideous position of being both exhausted and imprisoned by it and also looked down on for doing it ; that I had honestly tried to be the sort of wife Richard wanted — and the sort of wife I felt I ought to be — but it was like being in a kind of airless cell and I could only see Richard as a jailer ; that I saw myself becoming progressively more and more incapable of doing anything , not just mentally , but from some kind of paralysis of will .
8 ‘ All I could do was shut my eyes and think of John Major . ’
9 By next morning some stray cat had eaten much of his back , so all I could do was measure him .
10 All I could do was repeat the injections , but was it going to make the slightest difference ?
11 ‘ I realised he was n't going to be able to stop and all I could do was watch him come closer and closer to me .
12 All I could do was write a letter , and by the time I 'd written a letter and it got where it was going and a reply got back , a week or two weeks could have gone by .
13 There were no books in the room so all I could do was look out of the window and wait for the quarterly chimes from the Cathedral Clock .
14 So the least I could do was to get out and around looking for the guy .
15 The least I could do was agree to have dinner with him . ’
16 The only thing I could do was discuss with her yet again the best way to express our case .
17 I was isn a relationship which I could feel was going wrong — in the same way that all my previous relationships had gone wrong .
18 I knew the ones she meant ; she meant the square transparent boiled sweets which when she was a child would have been weighed out in pennyworths from a tall glass jar , but although I searched in grocers ’ shops and sweet shops high and low , all I could find were wrapped oval-shaped acid drops .
19 for a time , the only way I could communicate was to spell out words letter by letter by raising my eyebrows when someone pointed to the right letter on a spelling card .
20 I 've been quite frightened by what is happening in many areas of conservation and environment problems , and I decided that the best , one of the best , courses that I could take was to incorporate conservation in my work .
21 The few square inches of it that I could see were spoiled by the sticky red blood which had pooled out over them .
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