Example sentences of "i [vb past] [was/were] [to-vb] " in BNC.
Next page| No | Sentence |
|---|---|
| 1 | ‘ The biggest mistake I made was to start playing professional golf so early , ’ he explains . |
| 2 | ‘ In my wildest dreams the most I expected was to come on and get maybe a quarter of an hour . |
| 3 | The thing I learnt was to turn conflict round so that it was n't a negative thing , it was a cool thing . ’ |
| 4 | In fact , the only social folly I committed was to pretend I understood about contraception . |
| 5 | As a teacher researcher wanting to investigate the effect of new technology in school , one of the lines of research I followed was to use a questionnaire to ascertain the attitudes of my pupils to computers . |
| 6 | Merchanting er , is the buying and selling of materials not the production of materials , and erm , I was probably the first person from this area , in the leather trade , to go to China and we started to do quite a large business with China , so that immediately I was on my own , the first big operation I took was to go to China and make very substantial purchases of pigskin leather . |
| 7 | So the first thing I did was to spend ten years with the Royal Shakespeare Company ! |
| 8 | With this in mind , the first thing I did was to join the Oxford Exploration Club . |
| 9 | The first thing I did was to refurbish my 1973 vehicle , of course I have kept it in good order . |
| 10 | What I did was to wait for him to unbolt the door , which opens outwards . |
| 11 | All I did was to use a term to convey a meaning . |
| 12 | What I did was to teeter from side to side like a tall mast on a small ship in a heavy sea . |
| 13 | In fact , practically all I did was to go for solitary walks or pretend to read Virgil or Sophocles , whose two dead languages were now as meaningless to me as mental arithmetic , and as incapable of claiming my concentration . |
| 14 | The first major thing I did was to have a road laid from the top , rather a long way . |
| 15 | The first thing I did was to get used to it . |
| 16 | Erm and that would alter the book but nevertheless we would want to say , what I did was to alter the book . |
| 17 | They were absolutely horrid and if I went on the beach , the first thing I did was to dig a hole in the sand to put the feet in and then just stay there all day … . |
| 18 | Perhaps all I did was to elevate trivia into a principle . |
| 19 | What I did was to make a virtue of my misery . |
| 20 | All I did was to tell them to get rid of the Helvetica but . |
| 21 | The last thing I did was to fire the blazing stream of petrol at the buck still sitting stuffed and dead and oozing blood in the forefront of the Grounds . |
| 22 | ‘ First thing I did was to try to get us organized to leave again . |
| 23 | All I did was to congratulate Mark by patting him on the thigh , ’ said Roger Hoad . |
| 24 | The only second phone call I had was to say what is happening . |
| 25 | Worse one I had was to go and get some elbow grease . |
| 26 | One idea I had was to get the teddy bears to do the ‘ hokey cokey ’ [ p.67 ] with the children putting in their teddies ' left arms and shaking them about . |
| 27 | The only solution I had was to pay for the guy , bring the piece into my own workshop and re-do the top completely . |
| 28 | I realized that all I wanted was to stop him from writing on his own , and that this was possibly his own motive for working with me in Salamanca - to keep my true poetic self silent , subservient to his . |
| 29 | I know , sir , all I wanted was to wish an old hero a happy birthday . |
| 30 | At the same time I felt so inordinately tired that all I wanted was to lean my face against that corduroy and shut out the world . |