1.   It was becoming harder to meet the payments on their mortgages.

2.   Later, it became much harder to influence her.

3.   Memories grow less vivid, recent experiences are unshared, and imagined caresses across the kilometres become harder to conjure.

4.   Moreover, proof of non-consent on a charge of buggery or indecent assault is likely to become harder.

5.   Once vice-chancellors start to think the unthinkable, then the issue becomes part of the agenda and it becomes harder to retreat.

6.   Unfortunately it is becoming harder to obtain public liability insurance cover because of the very large amounts awarded nowadays in damage claims.

7.   These improvements were achieved in a market where hire rates have not improved and where contracts became even harder to win with margins further reduced.

8.   But the challenges to his monopoly of legitimacy were becoming harder to dismiss.

9.   The winter Olympics especially are becoming ever harder to fit into sensitive mountain settings, which must be protected from a rolling programme of environmental damage.

10.   The theory remains a controversial one but Dr Kinlen told The Scotsman that it is becoming harder to dismiss the findings as no more than chance.