Cannot help but

As we drove at breakneck speed through the streets, I could not help but be overwhelmed by the gaunt and desperate faces of the people, the endless squatter settlements of cheek-by-jowl, single-room shacks surrounded by ankle-deep mud, and the occasional glimpses of the rich apparently oblivious to the suffering around them.

Radulph could not help but notice how the breasts of a lady flugelhornist trembled whenever she blew into her instrument.

Standing on top of Trash Mountain (our local megadump) and affirming the Messianic promise of the kingdom of heaven, we cannot help but take responsibility for recycling and reducing consumption.

I cannot help but follow such panopticism to its ultimate conclusion: a Nineteen Eighty-Four scenario.

One cannot help but wonder whether the concerns ultimately had root in the presence of a diminutive, pileous, and swarthy Mediterranean atop a military vehicle, instead of our accepted Anglo-Saxon image of leadership and might.

The first thing Joe noticed was the seating arrangements — Katz at the head of the long antique cherry wood table, John Nagoshi to his right, Peter Nagoshi next to his father (and Joe could not help but study the younger Nagoshhi as he entered the room, his smooth expressionless face barely turning to acknowledge their entrance), and across the table FBI Boston Field Office Special Agent in Charge Leo King and Special Agent Ned Jacobs — the Feeb's resident profiler.

Every guest is appalled and fantastically humourless about the experience, even at this distance. You cannot help but wonder at cultural divides and how differently the British might have approached – or at least recalled – such events, at least in the early days. For us, surely, it would be a story for the ages. You could dine out on it for ever, so to speak.