Example sentences of "[noun] [pers pn] happened to [be] [verb] " in BNC.

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1 As was so often the case , he sucked up nourishment from books he happened to be reading , finding parallels in the lives of characters to his own dilemmas and solutions .
2 She spent more and more time off her eggs , parading about the yard , cackling as if demented and taking sudden rushes in whatever direction she happened to be facing when each fit of frenzy overcame her .
3 But , pushing him aside , she gathered her cloak around her , made so bravely from those two old plush tablecloths , and began to walk downhill — the direction she happened to be facing — until she came to St Jude 's churchyard where she sat on a gravestone , her head in her hands , and shivered .
4 Malcolm Rifkind , the Defence Secretary , intervened to say the army believed it would be ‘ grossly invidious for the choice of soldiers for redundancy to depend on whether at any given moment they happened to be serving in Northern Ireland , Bosnia , the UK or elsewhere ’ .
5 She would n't mention the boy who 'd made trouble unless for some reason she happened to be asked about him , and she felt she would not be .
6 Then one of the travelling craftsmen came out from the town and lined the cart , trap or wagon we happened to be making : that means he painted the finishing touches , the lines on the wheels and the panels .
7 At that time I happened to be running the scheme as a leader and officer in the Stornoway Sea Cadet Corps and the boy 's mother had asked me to attend in her place .
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